More TARP Returns: Taxpayers $21 million Richer!

Another day, another $21 million. Drip by drip, the capital U.S. taxpayers injected into the banking sytem in 2008 and 2009 streams back into federal coffers. Here are the TARP returns from last week:

Peapack-Gladstone, which sounds like a character on Downtown Abbey, but is in fact a bank based in Gladstone, New Jersey, paid back $14.341 million, closing out the government's $28 million investment in the bank.

North Central Bankshares, based in Fort Dodge, Iowa, now known as First Federal Iowa repurchased warrants it had granted Treasury as part of the original investment for $600,000.

In other TARP-related news, General Motors on January 11 paid back $6.7 million on one of the tranches of debt it received from Treasury in 2009.

Daniel Gross is economics editor at Yahoo! Finance

follow him on Twitter @grossdm; email him at grossdaniel11@yahoo.com;