bailout funds

As largest US banks Wells Fargo and Citigroup announced their plans to repay the taxpayer money the US government now can reduce its bailout investments in banks by more than 75%, stated the US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday.

He said: "With the recent announcements on repayments, we are now on track to reduce TARP bank investments by more than 75 percent, while earning a healthy profit on that commitment.”

In a prepared US Senate testimony Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the U.S. Treasury's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), said that US taxpayers will likely fail to get their money back that were invested in financial companies. He noted that while these funds played a significant role in stabilizing the economic system the bailout may never fulfill certain policy goals.