AIG is thinking about suing the government for bailing it out

It's been almost five years since AIG's stock dropped 60 percent in a day leaving the company doomed to failure, when Uncle Sam swooped in with $182 billion to rescue it. But AIG must have a short memory, because on Monday night news emerged that the insurance company is actually thinking about suing the U.S. government over the bailout that saved it. The board will discuss the idea with shareholders at a meeting on Wednesday.

It's not so much that AIG's mad the government bailed them out. (They wouldn't be around to be mad if it hadn't.) They just wish they'd done it a little bit differently. "The lawsuit does not argue that government help was not needed," The New York Times reports. "It contends that the onerous nature of the rescue -- the taking of what became a 92 percent stake in the company, the deal's high interest rates and the funneling of billions to the insurer's Wall Street clients -- deprived shareholders of tens of billions of dollars and violated the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the taking of private property for 'public use, without just compensation.'" Does that kind of bad attitude count as "looking the gift horse in the mouth" or "biting the hand that feeds you?" Or both?

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.