Treasury to Let 10 Banks Repay $68B in TARP Loans

The Treasury Department has given 10 banks—including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, American Express, and Capital One—permission to repay their TARP loans, the Wall Street Journal reports. The government will recoup $68 billion faster than anticipated, but the money won’t go back into the public coffers; Tim Geithner intends to deploy it to assist other firms, including some that have already received TARP funds.

The Treasury must now decide how to deal with the 10-year warrants it holds for the companies’ common stock. It must sell them, but it will have to decide at what price and to whom. Though the government hadn’t originally intended the money to be repaid so quickly, Congress passed legislation earlier this year requiring they be allowed to do so, provided they meet government criteria. (More Treasury Department stories.)