If you want to understand how AIG, already the recipient of more than $150 billion in US taxpayer funds, can still be registering the largest quarterly loss in history ($62 billion) and still be in need of more help from the government (another $30 billion), then you really must read Joe Nocera's piece from Saturday's New York Times.

It's an infuriating, almost surreal story of how a company transformed itself - not quite literally overnight, but pretty damned fast - from one of the most well-respected, well-run insurance firms in the world into what amounts to a global financial crack dealer, trading on its reputation to peddle exotic credit-default swaps for high fees while assuming insane amounts of risk.

The irony of it all, of course, is that what AIG was doing was all perfectly legal. More than that, it was well known within the global financial community.  There's barely any difference between AIG and Enron, except that Enron cooked their books in secret while AIG did it in public.

Another difference is that Enron was allowed to fail and its executives were put on trial and tossed in jail, while AIG is being propped up by US taxpayers to the tune of $180 billion - and counting.