In response, following enactment of the Troubled Asset Relief Program by Congress, Secretary Henry Paulson oversaw the injection of government capital into the nation’s largest financial firms, as well as into many smaller banking firms.
This first step toward stability was reinforced in early 2009 when Secretary Timothy Geithner initiated the stress test exercise to determine how much capital these firms needed to remain viable financial intermediaries and, perhaps as importantly, to share this information with markets.