3. How it fell apart
When the credit market fell in 2008, AIG had made a lot of businesses with CDS. These CDS
were mainly built of CDOs which were too high rated in the beginning. When the house
market fell, the CDOs began to lose their value. Soon they started to default so the CDS was
used. When the company sold CDS they got fees that they recognized as profit instead of
reserves (A. Davidson, 2008).
The financial market began to fall and no bonds were longer stable. The policyholders began
to use their insurances, or at least tried to use them. AIG could not possibly cover up for all
the insurances since they were out of reserve for this kind of events. In almost no time the
company began making big losses and since they, apart from most companies, only had sold
CDS without buying any they had no income either (S.E. Harrington, 2009).