Fed Sheds Last of AIG Securities at $6.6B Profit

The ""Federal Reserve Bank of New York"":http://www.newyorkfed.org/index.html announced an important milestone Thursday ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô the final sale of its remaining securities from the 2008 AIG bailout.

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The final sales from Maiden Lane III, one of the struggling mortgage-related portfolios the Fed usurped in 2008, brought the Fed's total profit from AIG securities to $6.6 billion.

""I am pleased that we were able to achieve our principal goal, which was to protect the U.S. economy from the potentially devastating effects of AIG's failure, while demonstrating sound stewardship of taxpayer

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interests,'' said William Dudley, president of the New York Fed.

""I am proud of and commend all of the people at the New York Fed who worked tirelessly and diligently to get us here,"" Dudley stated in a ""press release"":http://www.newyorkfed.org/index.html Thursday.

The Fed has been shedding its AIG securities since early this year with the sale of its final Maiden Lane II securities in February, followed by sales of some Maiden Lane III securities in June.

Maiden Lane LLC and Maiden Lane III LLC also repaid loans to the Fed in June, with interest.

The Fed profited $8.2 billion in interest and fees from loans made to AIG, in addition to its profits from the sale of Maden Lane securities.

In all, the Fed accrued $17.7 billion in revenue from its assistance to AIG.

The Federal Reserve and the Treasury stepped in to aid AIG, the world's largest insurance company, in 2008 when the company was teetering on the edge of collapse.

AIG's collapse ""posed a direct threat to millions of policyholders, state and local government agencies, 401(k) participants, banks and other financial institutions in the United States and abroad,"" according to the ""Fed."":http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/aig/index.html