“We’ve got a big problem. I mean, fucking big,” Douglas Braunstein of JP Morgan announced to his team at AIG just past midnight. The lights were still ablaze where a battalion of bankers, hunched over laptops and spreadsheets, had just discovered a new hole in AIG’s finances. Its securities lending business had lost $20 billion more than anyone had recorded. “We’re not trying to solve for $40 billion anymore,” Braunstein shouted. “We need $60 billion!”
