Here’s a move for everyone to practice.  Take your dominant hand, open it, and hold it at arm’s length with the palm side facing towards you.  Bring it, rapidly, towards your forehead as if you were trying to smash a fly there.  Ready?  Now do it for real, because AIG is suing the government (you know, the one that owns 80% of it) to get more money.

Now first, a couple of disclaimers.  I know this isn’t Edward Liddy’s fault, at least not entirely, but how can you resist a picture like that?  Also, I understand AIG faced possible shareholder lawsuits (from the other 20%, presumably) if the company did not seek recourse if these IRS payments were unwarranted. But we’re here for the LOL and the FAIL and there is no way audacity like this can go unnoticed.

At the heart of the matter is some $300m and change in taxes, penalties, and interest that AIG paid out to the IRS when the IRS gave a hearty “Oh HELL naw!” to some of AIG’s overseas tax-sheltering practices which also had the side benefit of saving the company metric (’cause it’s international, see) tons of money in borrowing costs.  I, for one, am shocked – SHOCKED – that a responsible and upstanding corporation such as AIG would dare get involved with questionable accounting practices. But they did, they got called on it, paid their fines, and are now suing to get that money back because, whoops, we shouldn’t have had to have paid that in the first place.

Except from a layman’s perspective, the company has taken $170b in bailout money, used it on such important things as spa days and bonuses, and is now suing to get more money. I wonder if any employees of the company are honestly puzzled as to why the public hates their guts on a corporate as well as on a personal level.  Actually, there is one now ex-employee who doesn’t get it.

AIG is in a sue-happy mood these days, also having sued Countrywide and Wachovia in the past few days. And so now we know AIG’s plan to raise enough money to repay the government: sue f***ing everything.