WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said yesterday that a new agency focused on protecting consumers is needed because the mission currently is too scattered among various regulators.

This results in "finger-pointing in place of action," he told the House Financial Services Committee.

The administration's plan to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency has bumped up against opposition from Republicans, industry and federal regulators.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has argued that the Fed is best suited for the role.

Monitoring risk and protecting consumers are "closely related, and thus entail both informational advantages and resource savings," Bernanke said in prepared testimony.

Geithner chalked up the pushback to federal regulators wanting to protect their turf.

"With great respect to the chairman and other supervisors who are reluctant to do this, they are doing what they should, which is defend the traditional prerogatives of their agencies," Geithner said.

CIT BANKRUPTCY LOOMS IF PLAN FOR BUYBACK FAILS

NEW YORK — Small-business lender CIT Group Inc. said yesterday it has sweetened some terms of a buyback offer for $1 billion of debt and repeated that it may have to seek bankruptcy protection if enough noteholders don't agree to it.

The New York-based financial company said in a regulatory filing that if the offer is successful, it won't file for bankruptcy and will pursue a restructuring through other unspecified ways.

CIT Group, one of the nation's largest lenders to small and midsize businesses, has been scrambling to find new funding as it wrestles with liquidity pressure and maturing debt. The government had refused to save the company last week.

MICROSOFT OFFERS BROWSER CHOICE TO AVOID EU FINES

BRUSSELS — Microsoft Corp. will offer computer users a choice of rival Web browsers to ward off new European Union antitrust fines, EU regulators and Microsoft said yesterday.

Microsoft said its proposal — if accepted by the European Commission — would "fully address" antitrust worries over its browser and "would mark a big step forward in addressing a decade of legal issues."