AIG: 5 Outlandish Story Lines

This week, TheStreet and RealMoney will be exploring the aftermath of Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy filing and the ensuing market chaos it brought to a head almost a year ago. Read all of our One Year Later coverage.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- American International Group (AIG) has received more support from the government's bank bailout than any other company throughout the global financial crisis. And it's not even a bank.

Since the feds seized control of the insurance giant on Sept. 16, 2008, the Treasury and Federal Reserve have extended $180 billion worth of support.

By comparison, Bank of America (BAC) and Citigroup (C) received more than $45 billion each from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in addition to the government's offers to backstop billions more in soured assets on their books. Wells Fargo (WFC) and JPMorgan Chase (WFC) each received $25 billion. The second runners-up for biggest corporate welfare recipient, Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE), have each had $100 billion extended.

AIG has so far used $134 billion and lost more than $64 billion in the three full quarters since the government takeover. It would have lost more had the government not purchased $50 billion of its toxic assets, extended $90 billion in credit lines and poured $40 billion into preferred stock investments.

Needless to say, the mammoth insurer -- which was years in the making -- had a long and hard fall, and its utter lack of insurance against its potential losses is mind-boggling in its scope. Here's a look back at five outlandish AIG story lines since the company nearly collapsed one year ago:

The Bailee Becomes Bailer-Outer

AIG's bailout might seem enormous for a single company, but that's because it wasn't just for AIG.

About $89 billion of the government's support has been funneled to counterparties -- dozens of banks, many outside the U.S. -- to douse the fire created by derivative products gone bad. Goldman Sachs (GS) got the biggest sliver of the pie at $13 billion, leading to sharp criticism of former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Paulson, a one-time Goldman CEO, decided to fully compensate AIG's trading partners, thereby helping his alma mater.

The combined BofA-Merrill Lynch came in a close second, receiving $12 billion.

And while $12.1 billion went to states that had investments guaranteed by AIG, a sizeable amount also went abroad. About $56 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars, or 41% of AIG's bailout spending so far, has gone to foreign banks, like Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank (DB), Barclays (BCS) and UBS (UBS).

Paulson's Goldman connections were fodder for conspiracy theorists and the flood of taxpayer dollars overseas didn't help a public already skeptical of the bailout like it any more.