Banks Recover, But the Economy Struggles in 2009

The stock market recovered. And banks repaid billions of dollars in government rescue money. But the housing market and unemployment weighed on the economy. Transcript of radio broadcast:

31 December 2009

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.

Two thousand nine may be remembered as the year the world avoided an economic depression.

In the United States, stock prices sank to their lowest levels in March. But stocks recovered strongly for the year. The S & P Five Hundred index gained over twenty percent--its largest increase in six years.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tells Congress in December that he is extending the TARP to October 2010 As two thousand nine ended, the nation's biggest banks rushed to repay money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. In October of two thousand eight, Congress approved up to seven hundred billion dollars to rescue the financial industry. Last month, the United States Treasury announced that Wells Fargo and Citibank had repaid forty-five billion dollars. They joined Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America in returning government aid.

In June, the Treasury permitted the ten largest banks to return their rescue money and withdraw from TARP. This let banks escape government restrictions on pay for top officials. Now, the government holds a large ownership share in only one big bank, Citigroup. The Treasury says it expects banks to repay one hundred seventy-five billion dollars of TARP money this year.