As the financial crisis took a steady grip on the banking world in the fall of 2008, officials at the U.S. Treasury were devising a plan to rescue the sector.

It was called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP for short. Initially designed to buy up toxic assets from the balance sheets of banks around the country, it quickly became a forum for injecting money into troubled institutions to stabilize their funds and encourage lending to individuals and businesses.

The largest banks in the country were made to step up first and take money from the fund – Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and more. Then it went to smaller banks down the line.