AIG head’s $3M in Goldman stock raises apparent conflict of interest

My Examiner column today is the first to report a fact that highlights the conflict-of-interest problems raised by the new government-business partnership:

Edward Liddy, CEO of government-run AIG, still owns more than $3 million of stock in Goldman Sachs, which has pocketed $13 billion or more of the $170 billion federal officials have spent bailing out the ailing Wall Street insurance giant.

Liddy is managing a company that receives taxpayer dollars to pay other financial firms, with Goldman Sachs the top recipient. While there is no reason to believe Liddy is influencing AIG actions to unfairly benefit Goldman, the situation represents a potential conflict of interest that would never be allowed in a government agency, but is permitted in the strange public-private chimeras, like AIG, spawned in this age of bailouts.

Read the whole thing here.