Nine US banks that had undergone stress tests earlier this year

Now that the economy appears to be on a slow path to recovery, some of the larger national banks have started to release themselves from the grasp of the federal government by repaying bailout loans given them last year.

The nation’s biggest banking institutions might have been rescued by the turmoil of their own making, but they aren’t thanking the government for it. While Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson, who at the time were New York Federal Reserve president and Treasury secretary respectively, were trying to iron out the details of the $700 billion rescue plan, CEOs of the banking companies were kept in the dark about their plans.