Talk about biting the handout that saved you ...

American International Group Inc., which paid off its $182 billion federal bailout recently, has been running advertisements thanking American taxpayers for helping save the company from ruin.

On Dec. 19, AIG CEO Robert Benmosche congratulated workers for reviving the company.

Now AIG is considering joining a lawsuit against taxpayers for having made that revival possible.

The AIG Board of Directors will meet today to decide whether the company should join a lawsuit against the federal government because of what some consider to be the onerous terms of the deal.

Former AIG CEO Maurice Greenberg filed the lawsuit in 2011 alleging that the high interest rates — the federal government earned $22 billion on the deal — deprived shareholders of billions of dollars in investments. He accuses the federal government of violating the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the taking of private property for "public use, without just compensation."

On its face, this seems to be an outrageously frivolous case. Indeed, a New York court dismissed it. But a Washington, D.C., court has allowed it to go forward.

The problem for AIG's board is that if Greenberg were to win his case — he is suing separately on behalf of his own company, Starr International, which had investments in AIG — the company could be open to additional lawsuits by shareholders.

The Federal Reserve Bank has said the lawsuit is without merit. A spokesman for the Fed told The New York Times that AIG's only other choice was bankruptcy.

Other companies have either paid back or are paying back their government loans. General Motors, tired of bearing the "Government Motors" moniker, announced its intent last month to buy back $5.5 billion in stock now held by the U.S. Treasury.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who served on a task force that helped structure the AIG bailout, said AIG's "reckless bets" on credit default swaps "nearly crashed our entire economy."

Greenberg isn't the first person to view the federal government as a loan shark, but even he recognizes that without the bailout, the company would have gone belly up.

Whether Greenberg's lawsuit succeeds or not, that fact that the courts have allowed this case to move forward is likely to give lawmakers pause about crafting future bailouts no matter how dire the economic circumstances.

Greenberg has argued that his company owes its loyalty to shareholders, not the U.S. taxpayers.

It is, as Warren suggested, one more reason for Congress to reform federal tax laws that give AIG and other Wall Street firms special tax breaks.