There’s an op-ed by Elizabeth Warren and other former COP-TARP members in today’s WaPo criticizing the preferential tax treatment given to AIG as part of the bailouts. I agree, of course, with their criticism of preferential tax treatment for bailed out companies. But isn’t the favoritism under the tax law about which they are complaining the same provision that GM exploited as well–and so that the same criticism could be applied with equal validity to GM? Or is there something different about the benefit that AIG is getting from the benefit GM received?
(BTW, I’m genuinely asking–they seem like the same things but I just don’t know if there is a nuance of tax law that I’m missing here, so forgive me if I’m missing something obvious here.)