Geithner says focus on recovery

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration will wind down programs at the heart of the government's $700 billion financial bailout but remains focused on supporting a fledgling economic recovery, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday.

"We are now at the point where we can begin to wind down the programs that really defined TARP in its initial stages," Geithner told Reuters in an interview, referring to the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

He said the administration would focus on "more-targeted programs directed at what are the principal areas where there's still weakness in access to credit," specifically citing housing and small businesses.

While many areas of the economy showed signs of perking up from a deep recession, Geithner said it was too soon for the administration to turn its attention to tightening the government's budget.

"For there to be a recovery that's self-sustaining over time ... people have to be confident that we'll bring those deficits down over time and that's a difficult balance," he said at the Reuters office in Washington.

"Right now, the overwhelming imperative we face is still to make sure that we reinforce this nascent recovery," he said.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, was passed by Congress last year while financial crisis was raging and was used to inject capital into struggling banks and automakers that, in some cases, were near collapse.

Geithner reiterated that a strong dollar was important to the United States, and said Washington needed to pursue policies that strengthen the country's long-term economic prospects, including putting the budget on a more-sustainable track.

The U.S. dollar has fallen to 14-month lows against a basket of currencies as investors have worried that huge U.S. budget deficits mean the United States will be forced to keep borrowing at record levels.

(Reporting by Glenn Somerville, David Lawder, Emily Kaiser, Tim Ahmann, editing by Anthony Boadle)