by Laura Conaway

Good morning. Shares of AIG have quadrupled in price over the last four months. Inquiring minds want to know why. Meanwhile the new CEO, Robert Benmosche, tells the Wall Street Journal (subs. requ'd.) he's content to wait up to three years to sell off the insurer's assets and pay back the federal government bailout money that could amount to $173 billion. The U.S. owns 80 percent of the troubled insurer.

Japan's reporting record unemployment, falling wages, falling prices and ... economic growth.

 

The U.K. reports its economy was shrinking less, by .7 percent last quarter.

Iceland is moving to repay more than $5 billion to the U.K. and the Netherlands for compensating people who lost money in Icelandic banks last year.

And R. Allen Stanford, accused of running a multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme, is said to have become blood brothers with the chief regulator of his bank in Antigua. The two men cut their wrists and mixed their blood in a 2003 meeting, according to details in a plea agreement signed by Stanford's chief financial officer, James M. Davis.