W.House on CIT: High standard set for company aid

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday that President Barack Obama had set high standards for granting aid to companies, a day after CIT Group Inc said bailout talks with the government had ended.

"A lot of that had to do with whether or not they could show themselves to be sustainable in the long term," White House spokesman Bill Burton, when asked about the troubled lender, told reporters aboard Air Force One with the president headed for New York.

The White House spoke after CIT, a lender to hundreds of thousands of small and mid-sized U.S. businesses, said bailout talks were over, a development that could ultimately drive the company into bankruptcy.

Wednesday's announcement followed last-ditch talks in which U.S. Treasury officials had expressed concern about a worsening liquidity crunch at the 101-year-old lender and indications that government aid would not put it on a path to recovery.

"The president when he came into office was clear that he would have a very high standard for what companies received assistance from the federal government, from American taxpayers," Burton said.

He also said Obama did not personally make the CIT decision. "The president is doing everything he can to open up credit markets," he said.

(Reporting by Steve Holland, writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)