By: Matthew Arndt, CFA, CPA, CFP | January 27, 2010 | The Regulators, Wall Street Ethics

As testimony gets underway about the global insurer AIG’s rescue and the suspicious activity that surrounds it here are the facts you need to know:

A.I.G. has received $180 billion in taxpayer commitments.

In 2008 after the rescuing of AIG commenced, Fed officials rejected a proposal that would have forced its trading partners to return $30 billion in cash that they had received from A.I.G., and instead, let the banks keep the cash and receive additional billions from taxpayers.

Henry M. Paulson Jr., then acting U.S. Treasury Secretary was integrally involved in the AIG bailout and a former CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Treasury adviser Dan Jester was a top executive alongside Mr. Paulson at Goldman Sachs and was extensively involved in the handling of the AIG bailout.

Goldman Sachs was A.I.G.’s largest trading partner and received $12.9 billion in the payments.

Testifying before Congress last March, Donald L. Kohn, the vice chairman of the Fed refused to identify those banks that received taxpayer funds as A.I.G. counterparties.

Fed governor Kevin M. Warsh expressed worry that paying the counterparties 100 cents on the dollar to unwind their insurance contracts could be a gift to the banks.

In the wake of the Fed’s decision to pay billions to the large banks doing business with A.I.G. here are the million dollar questions:

Why didn’t those overseeing the bailout of AIG push the large banks to accept less than full value for their contracts with AIG?

What led the Federal Reserve to pay 100 percent to the counterparties of AIG?

Why do Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner and the others involved in such a reckless use of taxpayer money still have jobs?