On September 1, 55-year-old Peter Hancock will take over as chief executive officer at American International Group, Inc. A Bloomberg profile of Hancock published today wants you to know: This is not your daddy's AIG CEO.

The CEO of economy-wrecking greed-disaster AIG compares criticism of the bonuses collected by his bailed-out derivatives jockeys to "hangman nooses....what we did in the Deep South. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong." Lynchings and criticizing bankers: equally wrong.

A.I.G., the backbone that runs one inch beneath the surface of the global economy, has gotten itself millions of dollars worth of free PR today by just considering joining a lawsuit against the U.S. government. To sue, or not to sue? To be ungrateful bastards, or to potentially miss a payday? It's not a complicated question, really.

Frank Wisner, our special envoy to Egypt and Barack Obama's point man for managing the ongoing crisis there, planted a big wet kiss on Hosni Mubarak over the weekend when he told attendees of a German security conference that Mubarak "must stay in office," which is not even remotely close to what Barack Obama has been saying.

Just in time for Tax Day, the Fed has released the numbers from the Bearn Stearns and AIG troubled asset purchases. Congratulations! You, American Taxpayer, are the proud owner of a shopping mall in Oklahoma City. [BusinessWeek]

Harvard grad Will Meyerhofer used to be a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell, the white shoe firm that represents the likes of AIG and Goldman Sachs. After doing his "part in destroying the nation's economy," he had a change of heart, went back to school, and became a psychotherapist. Now sees clients on a sliding scale, ranging from $10/hour for people who couldn't otherwise afford therapy to $200/hour for his former colleagues, who, we imagine, have a lot to get off their chests considering how much work they continue to do for both AIG and Goldman. [Above the Law]

Let's all take a moment to thank our friends at AIG. In the spirit of generosity, employees at the ruined insurance giant have agreed to a $20 million reduction in the $195 million in bonus payments they were previously promised. They didn't have to do it. But they did. To make you happy. Can't we all get along now? [WSJ]

Wall Street is cutting back on cash bonuses, which means paper-rich banksters are forced to choose between preschool tuition and new wine cellars until their restricted shares mature. Goldman Sachs is lending a hand by offering mortgages to its staff.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner got the pounding he was most certainly expecting when he headed to Capitol Hill today to answer questions about the bailout of AIG. If you missed it because you spent the entire afternoon discussing that new unfortunately-named oversized iPhone that Apple introduced today, you can watch one of the more heated exchanges after the jump.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is on Capitol Hill today, facing a barrage of camera-friendly and self-righteous (and justified!) bipartisan posturing from members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform over the AIG bailout. It's been testy.

After everything that's happened over the past year and half, you'd think it would be obvious to AIG and its CEO Robert Benmosche that the company probably shouldn't be using its five (yes, five) corporate jets to ferry AIG execs off on vacation. You'd be wrong. Fortunately, Benmosche and government regulators have now settled on a "Luxury Expenditure Policy," so when Benmosche diverts one of AIG's planes to stop off at his vacation home in Croatia in the future, he'll have to reimburse the company for the flight. [WSJ, Reuters]

A subsidiary of wrecked insurance giant AIG is now auctioning off the wrecked Airbus that Sully Sullenberger landed in the Hudson a year ago. [AIG Aviation]

Remember those protests outside AIG last fall? Those angry hearings in Washington? The bus trips to visit the suburban homes of AIG executives. The populist anger has subsided a good deal since then (even if the bill to bail out the firm has gone up), which is probably why five AIG executives are now threatening to quit the company if their pay is cut by Washington. [WSJ]

Five AIG executives don't care that the government had to bail their company out because they were utterly inept. They want their full 'compensation' or they'll quit.

Last year's financial collapse was made possible by the greed and incompetence of credit rating agencies, who got paid to lie about the value of subprime debt. It turns out they were responsible for the Goldman Sachs bailout, too.

Thanks to Bloomberg News, we now have a good idea how much of that $13 billion pass-through bailout Goldman Sachs got from AIG last year was pure taxpayer-financed gravy: $5.2 billion, courtesy Tim Geithner.

When Ken Feinberg, the guy Obama charged with reining in bonuses at bailed-out firms, asked AIG who its top-paid executives were, they couldn't answer. That place is a black hole of money.

The Treasury Department's soon-to-be-announced executive pay guidelines will drastically slash cash payouts to executives at GM, Citibank, AIG, Bank of America, and Chrysler. Not on the list: AIG pass-through beneficiary Goldman Sachs.

Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big To Fail describes, in intimate detail, the days leading up to the collapse of the biggest financial institutions in America. Did the men in that room pull us from the brink or push us over?

Is that good or bad? We just don't know anymore in this topsy-turvy world of bailouts and bonuses and government ownership of corporate monsters. But whatever—AIG pulled in a cool $1.8 billion last quarter.