The government’s restructured aid package to insurer American International Group of $150 billion “should be enough” to get the company on the right track, but only time will tell, according to its former CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg.

Greenberg is currently the chairman and CEO of C.V. Starr & Company.  The company and its affiliates are AIG‘s largest shareholder.

Speaking Monday from his New York office via videoconference to members of the Captive Insurance Council of the District of Columbia, Greenberg said while the impact of the relief package will take years to realize, he believes the company will be minimized “to a property casualty company worldwide with some modest life remaining assets, but it is hard to tell.”

In September, the government announced an $85 billion loan to AIG to save it from bankruptcy, a deal Greenberg voiced his criticism of in a letter last month to current company chairman and CEO Edward M. Liddy.

“It was very clear that the first program would fail and [the government] needed to do something,” Greenberg said, indicating that the deal, including a 14.5% interest rate requiring AIG to pay $22 billion, were “strangling the company.”

“Obviously, no firm is going to be able to withstand that,” he said.

The new deal announced Monday by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury reduces that bridge loan to $60 billion at a rate of about 6%, something Greenberg said was “a big difference.”

The restructured bailout will also take $40 billion from the Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in return for preferred stock investment in the insurer at about 10% interest, Greenberg said. Greenberg said he would have preferred a 5% rate like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae received, as the government’s interest will again be “a big hurdle to overcome.”

Greenberg said the $150 billion package “should be enough” to save the company, but the result will come in two to three years. It looks like the company will sell its life insurance operations, although there are some they’d like to keep, but in the end, it will all be up to the government, who is in charge, he said.

Rather than the government owning 79.9% of the company, Greenberg said he would have rather converted part of that to non-voting preferred stock, a move that could have raised capital.

“You can’t do that with the government owning nearly 80%,” he said.  “No one will invest in a nationalized company.  I think it was counter- intuitive what they did.  Had they reduced ownership to 50%, it would have boosted stock price and attracted investors in the company.  There is a lot of money in Europe and Asia that would invest if they could, but they won’t in a nationalized company.”

As for part of the reason the company is in such disarray – credit default swaps by AIG’s financial products – Greenberg said it is “very unlikely” the swaps will be a total loss for the company, but again, that will be seen in the next three to five years,” he said.

“Now, we’ll see what happens,” he said.  “This is not about Hank Greenberg.  My concern if for the thousands of employees that had their life savings wiped out.  I want to see the taxpayer paid back. This is a tragedy and I’m angry.”

Standard & Poor’s also announced on Monday that its ratings on AIG and its subsidiaries remain unchanged, despite the company announcing a third quarter loss of $24 billion.  Standard & Poor’s said the loss was not unexpected, “given the capital markets developments in the third quarter and the company’s exposures.”