You are subscribed to All Treasury Press Releases for U.S. Department of the Treasury. Remarks by Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew on Conference Call Highlighting Treasury Sale of Its Entire Ally Financial Stake and the Wind Down of TARP As prepared for delivery WASHINGTON – Thank you everybody for joining us. I am pleased to announce this morning that Treasury has sold its entire remaining stake in Ally Financial. With this sale, we are exiting the last major TARP investment and winding down the Auto Industry Financing Program. This program was a crucial part of the Obama Administration’s effort to stop the financial crisis and protect the economy from slipping into a second Great Depression. In March 2009, the President spoke about the decision to support the auto industry and the important role it plays in our economy – past, present and future. He said: “We cannot, and must not, and we will not let our auto industry simply vanish. This industry is like no other -- its an emblem of the American spirit; a once and future symbol of America’s success.” And he was right. This program worked. As a result of his efforts the automobile industry is back. It has added hundreds of thousands of auto jobs since the summer of 2009. Our economy is now creating jobs at the fastest pace since the 1990s. Last month we added more than 300,000 jobs and we have seen 57 straight months of private sector job growth. The unemployment rate is down to 5.8 percent from a high of 10.3 percent. We know there is more work to do, but this is a good time to take stock of just how far we have come, and the critical role TARP played in getting us here. At the peak, more than 700 institutions were in the TARP bank program. Today just 35 remain. The three programs that helped restart the flow of credit to meet the critical needs of small businesses and consumers are now closed. And while the goal was always to stabilize the economy, and not to make a profit, it is important to recognize the return we have earned for taxpayers. We recovered $19.6 billion on Ally, roughly $2.4 billion more than the $17.2 billion investment. With the proceeds from this sale, we will have recovered $441.7 billion on all TARP investments including the sale of Treasury’s AIG shares, compared to $426.4 billion disbursed. Before I hand it over to Deputy Assistant Secretary Tim Bowler, I want to acknowledge the efforts of current and former Treasury staff, former Secretary Tim Geithner and former Secretary Hank Paulson, and the many talented employees on the Office of Financial Stability team, who worked tirelessly to get us to across the finish line. With that, I’ll turn things over to Tim, who will give you some additional details of the exit and answer a couple questions. ###
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 21:38:49 +0000
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