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WELLS FARGO executives just couldn’t wait any longer or it would run the risk of looking like a laggard, like something was wrong.

When Citigroup, the weakest link of America’s nine largest banks that were bailed out, announced Monday morning its was joining other banks in repaying $25 billion in TARP money, San Francisco-based Wells became the lone major bank in the country not to reimburse taxpayers.

By the end of Monday, though, the peer pressure became too much, and Wells Fargo announced that it, too, would be repaying the money its chairman had called “asinine” last year when banks were forced to take the money by the feds.

Monday’s announcements capped a week that saw three of our country’s largest banks (Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells) say they were repaying taxpayers nearly $100 billion, and guess what? Financial markets yawned. No biggie?

Shouldn’t news that the country’s major banks had paid off their Great Recession debts move markets up in the same way that they were moved down when those same banks were supposedly melting before our eyes?

Even President Barack Obama said Monday that we, the country, “rise and fall together” with banks. But for Wall Street and investment insiders who move those meters, repayment is not seen as part of a broad economic recovery. It’s seen as a necessary step to escape government oversight.

The $245 billion bailout from the Troubled Asset

Relief Program, or TARP, was nothing more than a pain in the assets of banks, bringing unwanted intrusion, tough-to-swallow pay restrictions, demands for home-loan modifications and reductions in principal mortgage debt.

If you had said one year ago today that the crisis paralyzing the financial industry would all blow over in year and every major bank left standing would be all right, you would have been checked for swine flu.

Weren’t we all scared to death last fall by then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s assertion that billions in toxic assets were poised to decimate these same banks, which would in turn do the same to our economy and our country? Paulson insisted we stood inches from capitalistic calamity if the nine largest banks were not given $25 billion immediately.

Well it worked. Ole Hank was right. We saved those banks, and today, less than a year from that big scare, everything is all better …. for the banks, certainly not the economy.

President Obama’s statement that we “rise and fall together” with banks rings hollow. We all fell with those banks last autumn to the tune of some $2 trillion lost in net worth when financial markets overreacted to Paulson’s scare. Now that banks have risen — if full repayment of the bailout is a healthy indication — our economy remains horizontal with 15 million unemployed, 10 million potential foreclosures and record national debt.

So why the one-way street? The disconnect comes from the false assumption that the banks were really in dire trouble. It seems clear that banks sat on that $245 billion, lent very little of it and paid it back to escape looming pay cuts and government interference.

While banks are healthier and wealthier today, we as taxpayers do not seem to be any wiser to the motivations behind these moves.

Drew Voros is the business editor. His column runs on Wednesdays. He can be reached at avoros@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at www.twitter.com/bizeditor.