I know you don't mean to draw a parallel, but I'm nevertheless going to point out that the illustration isn't very...illustrative. AIG was in a situation where

I know you don't mean to draw a parallel, but I'm nevertheless going to point out that the illustration isn't very...illustrative. AIG was in a situation where the expectation was for it to go out of business because of its own (possibly illegal) mismanagement. It was offered a deal whose price, rather than being morally repugnant or open-ended, was merely expensive. And no one was going to die in any case. So let's try this: You've decided to push a rather nice antique couch off the back of a high-flying plane for reasons all your own. While it falls, someone radios you and says, "look, I'll snatch this couch out of the air with this really expensive-to-fly jet with grappling hooks I have, but afterwards you'll owe me 80% of what you make selling it or renting it to those weird antique museums". Turns out the guy calling you really just wants to prevent the couch from crashing into a residential area, but he figures that in order to afford this crazy couch-saving stunt, he needs a big chunk of equity in the couch, which will be splinters if he doesn't save it anyway. And you, having decided that dropping a valuable piece of furniture from 30,000 feet was a bad idea after all, take the deal. It turns out that you made a good move, because later you sell the couch and make lots of money, a lot of which goes to the crazy couch-saver guy. And you still think the deal sucks, so much so that, apparently, it was illegal for some reason, and you should get to keep a higher percentage of the couch's proceeds. Now, what part of that seems like duress?