US News

AIG chief says he deserves a ‘thank-you’ from feds after bailout

Taxpayers shelled out $182 billion to save his failing company — and now he wants us to thank him?!

Robert Benmosche — the boorish CEO and president of insurance giant AIG — gripes in a new magazine article that those selfish, inconsiderate feds failed to say “thank you” after his company repaid what amounted to the largest government bailout in history.

“The fact is we now have succeeded in getting the Fed all of their money, and we’re just close to getting the Treasury paid back,” the clueless CEO indignantly told New York magazine in an interview at his luxury villa in coastal Croatia. “And do you know, neither of them have ever said, ‘Thank you?’

“Somebody should shout, ‘By golly, those AIG people made a promise, and they are living up to a promise!’ . . . [The feds] are going to make a profit on top of everything else they’ve got. God bless America. And God bless AIG.’’

Benmosch noted AIG has more than upheld its part of the bargain with the payback and even delivered a profit to the government after the most generous — and loathed — government bailout ever for Wall Street.

As part of the whopping loan deal to keep the company, and possibly the country’s entire economy, from collapsing further, the feds got a majority stake in AIG. The feds, who plan to reduce their stake to 16 percent, estimate they will have made a $20 billion profit by next year.

“It wasn’t a free lunch,” Benmosche sniped of the loan. “Everybody said, ‘It’s just not going to happen, they’ll never pay it off.’ ”

But the company did, Benmosche, said — and should be patted on the back.

Former Treasury official and bailout critic Neil Barofsky told The Post he wasn’t shocked.

After all, Barofsky noted, the multimillionaire titan made headlines shortly after assuming the helm of the crumbling AIG in 2009 for taking two weeks off to jet to Croatia — because, as the CEO explained, “It was the first Zinfandel harvest.”

“Once again, we are confronted with the breathtaking arrogance of a CEO who personally pocketed millions of dollars of taxpayer money and then asks us to thank him for doing us the favor,” fumed Barofsky, author of “Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street while Rescuing Wall Street.”

“AIG played a significant role in enabling the excesses that lead to the global financial crisis that cost Americans trillions of dollars . . . Shame on Benmosche for forgetting that for one single moment.”