Banks Have Repaid 75% of Bailout, Geithner Says

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, said on Tuesday that taxpayers were recovering their investment from the financial bailouts as the program was wound down. But he acknowledged there would probably be a loss from the rescue of the insurer American International Group.

Mr. Geithner told a watchdog panel that banks had repaid about 75 percent of the bailout money they received, and the government’s investments in those banks had brought taxpayers $21 billion.

Mr. Geithner also said at a hearing of the Congressional Oversight Panel that the auto industry had made significant structural changes, and that the chances that General Motors and Chrysler would repay their bailout money had improved.

The oversight panel was created by Congress to oversee the Treasury Department’s $700 billion financial bailout program, created at the height of the financial crisis in the fall of 2008. The panel has been critical of the program, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

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