We take look at what's ahead this week with Marcus Mabry of The New York Times and Rob Watson of the BBC. This week, the U.S. and Russia sign a new arms treaty, Treasury Secretary Geithner visits India, and a date will be selected for elections in the United Kingdom. Plus, Tiger Woods returns to the green.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner defended his extension of TARP on Thursday, saying it will help fight foreclosures and increase lending for small businesses. But many banks have already paid back the bulk of their TARP money: Bank of America returned the entirety of its bailout funds on Wednesday, and Citigroup is playing catch-up, trying hard to get out from under government ownership by repaying $45 billion of TARP money. We speak with Andrew Ross Sorkin, chief acquisitions and mergers correspondent for The New York Times and author of "Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System - and Themselves." We also hear from Richard Bove, an analyst with Rochedale Securities in Lutz, Florida, on whether the paybacks mean the economic crisis is over, or just that banks want out of the program's regulation.
The Obama administration has two approaches to the economy: they want to grow it, but they also want to regulate it in new ways. A turf war has developed between President Obama's Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and a number of agencies, including the Federal Reserve, whose jurisdiction he's treading on. This week financial regulators have gone to Congress to protest Geithner's proposal to create a new agency to regulate credit cards, mortgages, and consumer debt. Stephen Labaton has been reporting on this bureaucratic battle for our partner The New York Times.