U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the U.S. “will soon outline” its plan to partner with private companies to rid banks of products which they can’t sell amid the current credit crisis in financial markets.

“We will soon outline our program to use market mechanisms to help clean up the legacy assets on bank balance sheets and bring in private capital alongside government financing to help restart markets for these assets,” Geithner said in a statement released Saturday by the U.S. Treasury.

Geithner proposed a framework for a public-private fund which would be used to move $500 billion in assets created by banks which have not sold well to risk-averse investors amid the current downturn in the U.S. economy.

The plan calls for public financing for the assets to be used in conjunction with private capital.

“We think there is significant interest by many of the banks to have a facility where they can fill these assets and we think there is significant interest among investors to buy these assets at a reasonable price so there is good upside potential,” Sheila Bair, Chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said last week in an interview with Marketplace.

She said the fund should be transparent, releasing the names of investors and prices paid for the assets to help create a market for them.

I'm hopeful those (disclosure) reports will show that taxpayers are making a healthy profit off this endeavor, and I think they will.

Timothy geithner