WASHINGTON—The Treasury Department on Friday said the money repaid to taxpayers for government funds used to bail out U.S. companies has for the first time surpassed the amount of loans. The Treasury, in its May report to Congress on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said TARP repayments reached $194 billion, $4 billion more than the outstanding debt of $190 billion.
In a statement, the Treasury's assistant secretary for financial stability, Herb Allison, described this as a milestone and said it is "further evidence that TARP is achieving its intended objectives: stabilizing our financial system and laying the groundwork for economic recovery."
The benchmark was reached in May when the Treasury completed its sale of 1.5 billion shares of Citigroup Inc., "a transaction that provided gross proceeds of $6.18 billion to taxpayers," the Treasury said.
