"Thanks for the $132 billion, U.S. Taxpayer. And don't worry about payback -- we're good for it!"

That's the gist of yesterday's congressional testimony from near-dead insurer AIG (NYSE: AIG). Arguing that a combination of asset sales and future profits will raise plenty of cash over the next few years, AIG (and the Federal Reserve) assured Congress that they're "confident you're going to get your money back plus a profit." And maybe they're right, but …

From where I sit, it doesn't look promising.

Show us the money, AIG!
As you can see, AIG's planned divestitures of assorted assets (including the $35.5 billion sale to Prudential (NYSE: PRU) of its AIA Group Asian life insurance business, and the $15.5 billion divestiture of Alico to MetLife (NYSE: MET)), and the eventual liquidation of $31 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities now sitting on the balance sheet of the New York Fed, will go a long way toward paying back the $132 billion that you and I have already sunk into this flailing business. But that still leaves about $50 billion unaccounted for. Will AIG ever really be able to pay us back for this "investment," much less provide us a "profit" to boot?

I have to say: I have my doubts. Sure, CEO Robert Benmosche says his company will earn as much as $8 billion next year. But the last time AIG was in the profit-making business, it took the company nearly five full years to earn $50 billion, plus -- and it promptly lost twice that amount in the two succeeding years. Call me a skeptic, but a record like that doesn't inspire confidence.

The more so because once AIG has sold off AIA and Alico, how exactly does it plan to earn profits in the first place? The problem with selling assets, you see, is that once you've sold 'em, they stop … earning … profits. So it seems to me, AIG is caught in a Catch-22. It can sell the assets to raise some cash. It can keep the assets and use them to earn more cash. But it cannot do both.

At least, that's the way I see it. But what do you think? Take the Foolish Rorschach test and use the comments box below to tell us what you see in the chart up above.