Washington, Dec 15 (DPA) US President Barack Obama Monday urged banks to ease access to credit, saying they owed it to the American people after billions of taxpayer dollars were spent last year to prevent the financial industry from completely collapsing.
“We expect them to explore every responsible way to help get our economy moving again,” Obama said at the White House, after meeting with the top executives from the nation’s largest banks.

Obama brought them to Washington to implore them to find ways to get credit to small-and medium-sized businesses who have struggled to secure loans following the financial sector meltdown that sunk the global economy.

“Today, due to the timely loans from the American people, our financial system has stabilized, the stock market has sprung back to life, our economy is growing and our banks are once again recording profits,” he said.

Under a Treasury Department programme launched last year, banks were loaned billions of dollars in bailout packages to stave off the damage caused by risky loan practices that produced record high loan defaults.

Most of those banks have repaid the money, motivated to free themselves from conditions imposed by the government that included restrictions on salaries and bonuses to top executives. Citigroup Inc announced Monday that it had reached an agreement with the Treasury Department to repay $20 billion in government bailout loans.