Thanks to the wit and wisdom of Washington, you and I are now shareholders in America’s largest banks. We should have the same rights Warren Buffett does when ponying up a couple hundred billion dollars. The difference is we got here at gunpoint.

Bankers are granted a government franchise from the people. They’re custodians entrusted not to lose our money. They’re lenders to industry and consumers. They’re mortgage lenders feeding quality home loans into securities that provide national liquidity. They’re lenders to small businesses under SBA guaranteed programs.

But bankers in the last decade refocused themselves, selling insurance, peddling “highly sophisticated debt instruments” and stalking takeover targets.

Bankers, today, are junk bond dealers, hawking overpriced and under collateralized auto loans in securitized pools to uneducated investors.

Bankers are credit card sharks, ripping off clients as bait and switchers to higher rates. If a payment is late a day, rates jump from 7.99% to 29.8% plus exorbitant over-limit and late fees on the way up to 42% APR. Card clients unwittingly agree to changes simply by using their card again.

Bankers are mortgage lenders putting people into homes at cheap rates then spring boarding them to foreclosure. In Alaska, we limited rip and run mortgages and as a result have enjoyed a stable housing market. In California and Florida, the housing bubble exploded, drowning trusting homeowners.

In home loans, 90% of foreclosures are caused by family breakup, medical costs or job loss. Bankers cannot underwrite for even one of those causes. Their dumbing down of the mortgage process to FICO score approvals has been disastrous. Today’s bankers need to understand that threatening foreclosure points the gun at their own heads, not the homeowner’s.

For America, the way out of this financial morass is to return banking to safeguarding and lending money, honestly under solid programs. But, instead bankers have stopped lending.

Congress approved their bailout for $700 billion. The FDIC is kicking in another $1.4 TRILLION. As the real investors in these banks, we need to instruct the Federal Reserve System, “The Fed,” to supervise these beneficiaries of our forced benevolence differently. The Fed should put bankers under strict new rules to reinstill confidence in the national banking system.

First, the Fed should torpedo credit card sharks that bait and switch. Congress should return usury laws to the states rather than preempt rates nationally. Preemption is a bankers’ license to steal across state lines.

Second, the Fed should restrain mortgage bankers from throwing someone out of their home, if they have equity or can make reasonable payments. Workouts are required in mortgage banking. Housing is a cyclical business. The Fed should foreclose the charter of incompetent bankers who fail to solve their housing loans.

Third, the Fed should kill the charter of bankers who refuse to lend with SBA and VA programs. That is un-American. Small business is the growth engine for jobs; the innovator and solution to recession. When lenders refuse to lend under these programs, losing their franchise should be guaranteed.

After TWO TRILLION DOLLARS in bailouts, bankers need rules that hold them accountable for their actions and equally important, their inactions. Today, our national economy is in a tailspin because bankers’ fail to effectively lend.

The Fed should use some of bailout to capitalize new groups of regional bankers committed to lending on nationally available terms that solve our small business’ liquidity and housing problems. Only lenders who commit to lend should receive any Fed infusion. Failed and frozen bankers should step aside to a new generation, not insurance agents nor securities dealers but traditional bankers who want to safeguard deposits and lend to people.

As reluctant new shareholders, we grant our proxy, to the Fed, to redirect banking back to the honor code business America once had and still deserves. Call your Congressman today.