Bernanke wasn’t the only leader to fault AIG. Dana Perino, a spokeswoman for President George W. Bush’s White House, called “despicable” expenses from a conference sponsored by AIG for independent agents at a California resort after receiving U.S. aid. President Barack Obama said bonus payments to traders at the money-losing Financial Products unit were an “outrage.”

Then-CEO Edward Liddy told Congress in 2009 of threats, including one that said AIG executives should be “executed with piano wire around their necks.” AIG stripped its logo from employee badges and charge cards after staff were harassed.

“It really stuck in the public’s craw that trillions of dollars of financial support were being provided to the commanding heights of the American financial system, and those guys were still paying themselves huge bonuses,” said Jim Millstein, the former Treasury chief restructuring officer and now CEO of advisory firm Millstein & Co. “I have real sympathy with the public in this regard.”

Asset Sales

Benmosche, the former CEO of MetLife Inc., has sold Asian life insurers, consumer-finance operations and real estate since taking over in 2009 to help repay the rescue and simplify the company. He struck a deal this week to sell an 80 percent stake in the insurer’s plane-leasing unit. AIG had about $550 billion in assets as of Sept. 30, compared with more than $1 trillion at the end of 2007.

The revised bailout included a $60 billion credit line from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a Treasury investment of as much as $69.8 billion and up to $52.5 billion from the Fed to buy mortgage-linked assets once owned or backed by AIG.

The Treasury acquired AIG common stock at a cost of about $47.5 billion, and the department’s profit on the share sales was about $4.1 billion. Most of the total $22.7 billion profit was recorded by the Fed, fueled by gains in mortgage-linked securities assumed in the rescue. The U.S. still holds warrants to buy about 2.7 million shares of AIG stock.

“Today warrants a celebration like no other in AIG’s history and places well in the past a crisis none of us will ever forget,” Benmosche said in a memo to employees.

‘Huge Gap’

The bailouts helped push Congress to pass the Dodd-Frank law to limit taxpayers’ cost on failing firms. AIG in October became the first non-bank to say it’s under consideration by regulators to be labeled a potential risk to the financial system, a designation that could lead to tighter capital rules.