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Treasury Secretary Geithner tells Congress that the U.S. will reach its legal debt limit by May 16 and urges lawmakers to act soon.
The Treasury Department’s arsenal of emergency measures may provide extra borrowing room to last only until about July 8, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said today. Get the full story »
American International Group repaid another $6.9 billion of its bailout on Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury said.
With that payment, the Treasury said it has now recovered 70 percent of the $411 billion distributed under the crisis-era Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Get the full story »
General Motors Co. posted fourth-quarter earnings slightly above expectations and its first full-year profit since 2004. Profit for all of 2010 was $4.7 billion, achieved after the company slashed costs and debt in a 2009 bankruptcy financed by the Obama administration. Get the full story »
The Obama administration on Friday declared the public-private housing finance model in place for the past four decades was dead but pledged to continue backing exisiting obligations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“The GSE model is dead,” an Obama administration official told reporters as the Treasury Department released a long-awaited report on options to revamp housing reform. Get the full story »
The White House will propose a path to wind down and eventually eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and specify a range of options to replace the mortgage companies that have played a central role in the housing market for decades, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Obama administration is due to release its proposal for the future of the nation’s $10.6 trillion mortgage market as soon as Friday, outlining steps to gradually reduce the government footprint in the mortgage market. Together with federal agencies, Fannie and Freddie have accounted for nine of 10 new loan originations in the past year. Get the full story »
Mortgage loan servicers negotiated 1.76 million permanent loan modifications for homeowners last year, but more than two-thirds of them were completed in-house and not part of the federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Program. Get the full story »
OMG. That’s what Wintrust Financial Corp. Chief Executive Ed Wehmer, whose Lake Forest-based company is the first locally headquartered mid-sized bank to repay its bailout money to the U.S. Treasury Department, says he has said when looking at 20 to 25 potential acquisitions recently.
Wintrust hasn’t pulled the trigger on any of them because of their credit problems.
“You get in there, and you go, ‘Oh my God,’” said Wehmer, whose $14 billion-asset company owns 15 banks. Also, the potential acquisition targets didn’t have that great of a franchise, he said. Get the full story »
The U.S. Treasury said on Thursday it is launching a pilot program to deliver income tax refunds on debit cards for low- and moderate-income people who do not have traditional bank accounts.
The Visa prepaid debit cards are designed to allow these taxpayers to receive their refunds much faster than with a paper check and avoid high fees for cashing those checks at currency exchanges or payday loan stores. Get the full story »
Six banks have repurchased investments the government made under its taxpayer-funded financial rescue program, paying a total of $626 million including dividends, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. Get the full story »
The Treasury Department says six banks have repaid government bailouts worth a combined $2.66 billion.
The banks are returning taxpayer money that they received in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
The banks that repaid their bailouts on Wednesday are Huntington Bancshares, First Horizon National Corp., Wintrust Financial Corp., Susquehanna Bancshares Inc., Heritage Financial Corp. and The Bank of Kentucky Financial Corp. Get the full story »
More troubled homeowners are dropping out of the Obama administration’s main foreclosure-relief program, which has been widely criticized for failing to help more people keep their homes.
The Treasury Department said Wednesday that about 774,000 homeowners have dropped out as of last month. That’s about 54 percent of the more than 1.4 million people who applied. And it’s up from October, when approximately 756,000 had fallen out. Get the full story »
The government has received another $2.1 billion in repayments from General Motors Co. Get the full story »
The Treasury Department has received an additional $1.8 billion in net proceeds from the sale of additional stock in General Motors. Get the full story »
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will appear on the news program “60 minutes” on Sunday, part of an effort by the central bank to step up its public communications.
The move comes as the Fed’s decision last month to purchase an additional $600 billion caused a flurry of criticism from politicians in Washington, who argue the central bank is playing with fire and courting future inflation. Get the full story »
