Imagine you’re a community banker and you drive a sensible, no-nonsense kind of car. An efficient sedan, nothing too flashy.

Now imagine comfortably cruising along in your understated Q-ship. Everything seems fine, the engine’s humming, the ride is smooth and you’ve got something catchy playing on the radio. Life is good.

But out of nowhere you hit an enormous pothole. Now, you didn’t create that pothole of course (other motorists, driving flashier cars, are to blame), but you couldn’t avoid it. A hard slam on the brakes and a spine-shuddering “thump” follows, and before you know it, your comfortable, no-nonsense machine is running a little rough, not responding like it used to.

A visit to the local mechanic reveals some costly damage. You could probably afford to fix it yourself. You’d have to tighten your belt quite a bit, but you could do it.

But as you’re agonizing over how to pay for this mess, along comes a kindly-looking man with whom you’ve done business in the past. He’s always treated you fairly, and he’s got very deep pockets. He’s more like a favorite uncle, really, than a true business partner.

We’ll call him Sam.

“Don’t use your own money to fix the problem,” Sam says with a smile. “Let me help you out of this mess. You can pay me back later.”

And so, perhaps against your better judgment, and knowing you can and probably would rather just fix the car yourself, you agree. You take the key off your key ring and hand it over.

“Thanks, you won’t regret it,” Sam tells you. “But don’t you have a spare key at home? I’ll need that too.”

But the other key, you argue, doesn’t matter. The key you’ve just given Sam should be fine, and you’d just as soon hang on to the spare.

“Look, if you want me to fix this problem, I’ll need all your keys,” Sam says, still smiling, but a little colder now.

So, with little other option, you give Sam the spare, too.

And sure enough, Sam fixes your car. After paying Sam back for his troubles, you hold out your hand for the keys.

But one is missing. Sam’s still got the spare in his back pocket.

You understand Sam’s game now. And you don’t like it one bit. What used to be your car is now, at best, a shared car. Attempts to buy back the outstanding key are rebuffed. Sam keeps telling you you’re low-balling him, that the spare key has more value than you seem to think. After all, he says, you’ve got a pretty nice ride now thanks to him, and he may want to take it out for a spin some time.

Sound familiar? It should.

Uncle Sam (yes, that Uncle Sam) holds the keys to hundreds of banks nationwide. Through the TARP program, the Treasury saved these banks from spending their own money to fix problems caused in part by other banks, in exchange for a small ownership stake in the form of preferred shares.

Now, as more banks believe their ship has been righted sufficiently to make it on their own, many are trying to buy back these shares. But Sam is holding a key, in the form of warrants for potential future stock purchases. And in some cases Sam’s not letting that key go without a fight.

The hue and cry from Sam’s camp focuses on securing “fair market value,” maximum return for taxpayers, and we can understand that to a degree. We do, after all, pay taxes too.

But we don’t think bankers ought to be further demonized by the public for demanding control at a low price for what was at one point already theirs. Many banks, in fact, for fear of said demonization, already went ahead and fixed their own cars with their own money in the first place, perhaps to their competitive detriment.

In the end, we think its about time the price was fair to the bankers first, and not Uncle Sam.