Even during his most frenzied days, when Congress is demanding answers or the president himself is calling, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner makes time to talk to a select group of powerful Wall Street bankers.

Powerful House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has scheduled a series of markup sessions for key parts of the reform package, according to Congressional sources.

The US economy needs another cash infusion to kicksart consumption and longer term the US has to devalue the dollar to get out of the crisis, investor Wilbur Ross told CNBC Tuesday.

When President Obama travels to Wall Street's Federal Hall on Monday,  where the founders once argued bitterly over how much the government should control the national economy, he is likely to cast himself as a “reluctant shareholder” in America’s biggest industries and financial institutions.

Halting the financial sector's death plunge is arguably the government's most measurable achievement this year. Yet as President Barack Obama observes the one-year anniversary of Lehman Brothers' collapse, his administration's increasingly sunny assessment of Wall Street's rebound faces a hard sell.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner offered a spirited defense of the government's efforts to forestall another Great Depression but cautioned that the recovery would be slow and painful.

“I think it’s unraveling,’ says former FDIC Chairman William Isaac. “It is hard for me to see how this legislation gets done this year.”

Banks were pressured to take government bailout funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program whether they wanted to or not, said Bill Cooper, the chairman and CEO of TCF Financial.

BB&T CEO Kelly King told CNBC Tuesday the transaction is almost "risk free."

Thrifty Bank of America is worse than bonus-mad Wall Street.

Colonial BancGroup says it is under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice over alleged accounting irregularities at its mortgage warehouse lending unit.

The Treasury Department on Monday reduced its borrowing estimate in the current July-September quarter by $109 billion, some rare good news about the government's financial needs.

Goldman Sachs has redeemed the outstanding warrants the US government received through the TARP program for $1.1 billion, the company announced Wednesday.

As Congress spent much of the last three months looking at ways to tighten regulations on financial institutions, some of the biggest bailout recipients increased their spending on influencing legislators.

Just how much could the bailout of the financial system end up costing American taxpayers?