How would you characterize a physician who refused to tell a patient that he or she was deathly ill? An attorney who didn't warn a client that he was facing dire consequences in an upcoming trial? A dentist who not only refused to pull a rotten tooth but who counseled the patient to "stick with it" and implied that the tooth would get better?

I'd call them crooks. The same goes for bankers and brokers who saw the current financial tsunami coming and deliberately turned their backs on their clients. Billions of dollars have been lost and lives ruined because of their cruel negligence. Now, they're controlling the purse strings of an entire nation by refusing to lend money — taxpayer money that they've been given as part of a bailout scheme. But the banks aren't alone in their culpability. Consumers who foolishly buried their heads in the sand since Reagan-era voodoo economics are also to blame.

The bankers, the brokers and the financial services uberclass needn't be demonized, but the government must force them to loosen their grip on our money, reduce their enormous expenses and stop gambling with our futures. How do we do that? First, by passing legislation that requires banks to either resume lending immediately or lose the privilege of operating. It is that simple. The workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago have shown us the way. They took strong action and Bank of America relented by agreeing to back Republic through the hard times as well as the good times. Imagine that.

Taking action to preserve personal capital
Economists say we've been in a recession since December of 2007. This came as no surprise to me. In February 2008, I pulled my money out of the stock market and put it into cash accounts after a battle royal with my broker. I'm no smarter than anyone else, but I've long been a fiscal curmudgeon who never embraced the basic premise of the financial-services industry. Said premise — that we're better off having professionals take care of our money — is at best antiquated, at worst a cruel joke.

No, I don't have a Ph.D in finance, but I've been working with money for more than 50 years and I've developed two common-sense principles that don't require a doctorate in the mystic art of economics. Principle No. 1: The safest way to grow your money is to save it in a safe place where you can find it when you need it. Add to it gradually and it will grow, slowly but surely. This is called capital preservation, and it is the bedrock of all investing. Principle No. 2: If you own even a small amount of money, entire industries have been established to seize it, control it, service it, lend it or otherwise put it in their stash. That's the way of the world.

The animating idea behind much of our banking system is to actualize Principle No. 2. Banks crave our money so they can play with it in the market. In return, they provide interest, help businesses blossom, lend money to our neighbors and do other wonderful things. At least they used to do those things.

A few years ago, paradoxically, a bank (call it Bank Numero Uno) refused to deposit a large check written to me by a major corporation. I got up, walked across the street to another bank, opened a new account and deposited my check. The banker there scratched his head. "I don't know what's wrong with those guys at Numero Uno, but we're happy to take your check," he said.

Customers buffeted with hidden fees
That's when I concluded that thanks to deregulation, banks could do pretty much whatever they wanted, including buffet consumers with hidden fees buried in small print. I once discovered that a particular fee had been raised from $50 per year to $100 on all six of my brokerage accounts at the investment arm of my bank. When I yelled at my account executive, the fees magically disappeared.

Yeah. Banks can do pretty much whatever they want.

These lessons sting because we expect the morality of bankers and brokers to be on par with that of doctors and other professionals. The guiding precept of any professional service should be similar to the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. But as millions of consumers have discovered, banks and brokerage firms have done plenty of harm and they're still doing it while being bailed out with our money.

When I arranged a meeting with my broker in February, I told him that I had no intention of losing my nest egg in a market meltdown. Having lived through the savings-and-loan debacle, I could see the warning signs of yet another disaster. My broker's reaction was nothing short of infuriating.

"You can't time the market. You should be in this for the long haul," he said blankly. My reaction was something like this:

"Sure, I'm in it for the long haul, Spanky, but there's no rule that precludes me from taking a break. My relationship with you is not a marriage. Where is it written that deciding to put my money in cash is some kind of violation of the public trust? I didn't sign up to ride the financial market down to its briny grave, nor do I like having to justify my financial decisions. Whose money is it, anyway?"

Getting real about the market
Certainly, many have made fortunes by allowing professional money managers to handle their life's savings. But the truth is, playing the stock market — even through mutual funds and index funds — has always been a gamble. Fund managers upped the ante considerably by using our money in highly questionable ways, telling people to invest in hedge funds and, to make matters worse, trying to shame the few individuals who wanted to preserve their capital by walking away from the market/casino.

Here's why the shame game didn't work on me: I have known since the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s that the basic value of most things in our society is highly inflated. I watched the cost of entrees go up in restaurants and wondered why iceberg lettuce with a bit of bleu cheese dressing should cost $9.95. I also noticed that each time the banks inflated the value of my house, I magically qualified for a higher line of credit.

It occurred to me then that the so-called housing boom was in large part a fraud: The people who certify home values — the banks — had discovered that inflating home values allowed them to increase their business by offering second mortgages to giddy homeowners.

A beautiful fantasy
It was a beautiful fantasy that sparked a series of pyramid and Ponzi schemes, some of which prompted the current economic crisis. People who'd never before considered themselves wealthy suddenly borrowed extravagantly to fund vacations, swimming pools in their backyards, and even cabin purchases up North. I'm talking about middle-class borrowers, not the subprime mortgage holders, and certainly not minorities who, according to the wingnuts on the right, caused the subprime meltdown. No, the middle class bought into these schemes because the banks catered to their desire to feel wealthy even when they weren't.

But there comes a time when we simply have to stop fooling ourselves and look critically at our economy and the institutions that run it. Obviously, bank managers and fund managers made terrible decisions in the hope that the fantasy would continue ad infinitum. For that kind of magical thinking alone, many of them should be fired. The consequences for those who overtly dealt in deceit and deception should be more serious — like going to prison. Still, we need to look closely at our own behavior during the last two decades and ask why we ignored the signs of what Alan Greenspan once called "irrational exuberance."

The answers are complex and may best be left to historians. Meanwhile, every American should practice the kind of civil disobedience exhibited by the workers at the Republic Window and Door plant in Chicago — protest, protest, protest.

Tell your bankers that you want to see immediate changes in their lending profiles and that they must loosen credit now. Tell them that you intend to withdraw your money and perhaps to boycott their activities in the community if they continue to restrict loans. Tell them they don't get a free ride — in fact, they now work for the rest of us. Tell them these things without hesitation, because although economic times may be tough, the Great Awakening has the potential to help us reinvent this country so that it is less greedy, more just and perhaps, if we are fortunate, sustainable.

Syl Jones is a Minnesota playwright and essayist.