WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner today defended the bank rescue program devised by the Obama administration as the International Monetary Fund predicted U.S. financial institutions could lose $2.7 trillion from the global credit crisis.

Geithner, testifying before the rescue plan's Congressional Oversight Panel, faced a battery of questions over the Treasury's public-private partnership investment plan to rid financial institutions of their troubled assets.

His testimony came in the wake of a watchdog agency report that warned Obama administration initiatives could increasingly expose taxpayers to losses and make the government more vulnerable to fraud.

A special inspector general assigned to the Treasury's $700 bailout program concluded in a 250-page quarterly report to Congress that the private-public partnership is tilted in favor of private investors and creates "potential unfairness to the taxpayer."