Hanging in the balance...

You'd probably have to try really hard not hear at least some news of what's going on in the financial markets this week. It was impossible for me. Why you ask? Well, I work for a subsidiary of AIG. That's right, AIG. If you really do live in a bubble, let me summarize...

AIG is the largest insurance company in the world. It also owns (I think) over 200 subsidiaries that don't necessarily sell insurance. This mortgage crisis (e-mail me if you would like some detail on how that works... I understand a small portion of those problems) hit AIG really hard, and there was some speculation that they didn't have the reserves to cover all the guarantees/policies they had out there. This led to a reduction in credit rating, which led to a lot of those loans being called... and surprise, surprise they didn't have enough reserves to cover it all. Yesterday, the government finally agreed to loan AIG $85 billion until they can sell off their assets and shore up their reserves again.

Sell off it's assets. That most likely means us. The main part of our company does not deal in insurance, and to make matters more complicated, my division deals with even another form of business not related to insurance... so the question (from my perspective at least) today is... when and who is going to buy us, and how are they going to do it - will we be a part of the original company that was bought by AIG, or will they sell us off on our own, seperately? Or will they just simply disband us and that will be the end of that?

And that leads to whether or not I will have a job here in 6 months. And in all of this uncertainty, Mike and I had originally planned on remodeling the kitchen in the coming months. I think that will have to be put on hold until we know more about what's going to happen to me now. So much for a brand new kitchen by Christmastime!

Anyway, so that's the state of my life this week. Mike's doing fine - his work is stable as always, video games always have work. He's had to work late Monday, but not yesterday, and probably not today, so we're happy to have him home in the evenings :)