The administration also paid close attention to the political climate. With the private sector increasingly wary of Congressional intervention in the business of those who participate in government bailout programs, Mr. Obama substantially dialed back the near endorsement he had given late last week to the House vote for a confiscatory 90 percent tax on bonuses like those A.I.G. doled out.

“As a general proposition, you don’t want to be passing laws that are just targeting a handful of individuals,” he said in an interview on Sunday night on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” in what administration officials said was a signal to investors that he understood their concerns about doing business with the government.

The Treasury Department also increased the amount of equity the government would provide for the public-private financing package, to as much as $100 billion, up from some earlier estimates of as low as $50 billion. “The private sector stepped up on the day of the announcement saying they wanted to participate, which provided a Good Housekeeping seal,” Mr. Emanuel said. “And the second thing was that the presentation was organized in a way that the expectations of the program were met by the actual program.”

For both, he gave credit to Mr. Geithner and his still-small Treasury team. There was even good news by Monday evening on the matter of Treasury’s much criticized understaffing. The White House announced the nominations of two Clinton administration veterans to top posts: Neal S. Wolin to be Mr. Geithner’s deputy Treasury secretary, and Lael Brainard to be under secretary for international affairs.

Yet even as Mr. Geithner tries to focus further on the financial rescue plan, the A.I.G. controversy will dog him for a second week. On Tuesday he will be on Capitol Hill to answer questions from the House Financial Services Committee about his handling of the A.I.G. bailout and bonuses.

Chairman Ben S. Bernanke of the Federal Reserve and William C. Dudley, Mr. Geithner’s successor as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, also will testify. Both have shared jurisdiction over A.I.G. with Treasury since last September, when the government bailed out the global insurance giant to prevent it from collapsing and taking down the major financial institutions that were among its customers.