A watchdog stated that the government's forty five billion dollar bailout of Citigroup, during the financial crisis could achieve the goal of restoring the market's confidence in the third-largest bank and lessened the risk of taxpayer loss.

The government took the decision to help Citigroup in the fall of 2008 incoherently and rather decided it on gut instinct, as stated by a report issued on Thursday by the office of Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the seven hundred billion bailout of the financial industry and automakers.

The report also stated that by pulling out Citigroup, the government in a way had encouraged high-risk behavior by indicating that big financial institutions would be protected from failing.

Citigroup had paid back the bailout, which was one of the largest of the rescue program. The government stated that taxpayers made as much as twelve billion dollars out of it.

A report by a government watchdog further said on Thursday that Citigroup, the major financial services company pulled out by the government in the month of November of 2008, is still too big to be allowed to fail, a situation that could make future bailouts of big banking companies a necessity,.

In the report that got issued by the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Neil M. Barofsky, stated that the government still had not developed objective criteria to measure the amount of systemic risk posed by major financial companies.