More clarity needed on Tarp
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner should put more pressure on US banks to reveal how they intend to use over $200bn (£122.5bn) which the government has ploughed into them, according to a new report by Neil Barofsky, special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp). The report, to be published today, will say that existing Treasury records of TARP banks’ lending do not reveal the whole picture of what the banks are doing with the money. The survey of 360 banks, collected in March, shows that 83 per cent of banks used TARP money for lending, while 43 per cent used funds to add to their capital cushion and 31 per cent made new investments.