Source: Xinhua

03-03-2009 10:09

WASHINGTON, March 2 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. government will provide another 30 billion U.S. dollars to American International Group (AIG) to stave off collapse of the troubled insurance giant, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve (Fed) announced Monday in a joint statement.

The logo of American International Group Inc. (AIG) on the outside of their corporate headquarters in New York, is pictured in this November 10, 2008  file photo. The U.S. government threw a new $30 billion lifeline to AIG on  March 1, 2009 as the embattled insurer prepared to report the biggest  quarterly loss in corporate history. (Xinhua/Reuters File Photo)

The announcement came the same day as AIG, once the world's largest insurer, reported it lost 61.7 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2008, the biggest quarterly loss in U.S. corporate history.

For all of last year, the insurer posted a net loss of 99.3 billion dollars.

In an effort to avert a potentially catastrophic collapse of AIG, the U.S. government had already pumped some 150 billion dollars into the ailing company.