A quarter of a trillion dollars, if it comes to that, is an astounding amount of money to hand over to one company to prevent it from going bust. Yet the government feels it has no choice: because of A.I.G.’s dubious business practices during the housing bubble it pretty much has the world’s financial system by the throat. … A bailout of A.I.G. is really a bailout of its trading partners — which essentially constitutes the entire Western banking system.