(UNDATED) Like a drunk starting his evening toot, a Chase Bank manager on Park Avenue saw me filling out a deposit slip, offered to help, and whisked me into his office.

There, he handed me over to a “business banker” who launched into a practiced pitch for taking out yet another credit card. On the very street where thousands are losing their jobs every day, she apparently figured the lure of more credit would be irresistible.

Once I escaped, I felt the chill of a comparable assault two years ago, when another Chase manager learned that we still owned a house in North Carolina and relentlessly pushed the something-for-nothing virtues of a home equity loan.

How can the financial sector regain public trust as long as their primary business plan is to lure suckers to their own destruction? Predatory lurking around other people’s money isn’t a plan for growth; it’s a moral swamp.

It’s the same with other industries. The minute gasoline prices started down, U.S. automakers dusted off ads for gas guzzlers as if global warming, dependence on foreign oil, Japanese hybrids and tanking truck sales were just speed bumps and not fundamental shifts in the automotive universe.

Years after Americans lost their appetite for four-bedroom houses in far-flung exurbs, real estate firms kept gambling recklessly on “fields of dreams.”

Now these industries and others want government bailouts to rescue them from their own bad business decisions. Most will probably get those bailouts because the economy couldn’t stand their collapse. But when will their business plans change?

Drunks keep cycling downward until they figure out that the nightly path to blotto is insane. So I’d like to propose a new 12-step program called “Deciders Anonymous.” It’s for the leaders-business, educational, government, religious-who hope that repeating the same old failed plans will work out better next time.

The first step, of course, is to admit we are “powerless” over the very substance that is killing us. In the case of decision-makers, that means easy answers, predatory marketing, greed, subterfuge and a refusal to accept accountability and to learn from failure.

The next steps entail seeking a “greater power” that can “restore our lives to sanity.” Whatever we call that higher power, the point is, we can’t save ourselves. The false god we serve needs to be replaced.

Then comes a “searching and fearless moral inventory,” not impeded by battalions of lawyers throwing smoke. It’s followed by admitting the need to make amends and by actually making amends to people we have hurt.

The final steps identify recovery as more than a grand bailout, but rather a determination to live sanely one day at a time; accepting a “spiritual awakening”; and not making grandiose plans that won’t survive the next temptation.

I say this in all sincerity. Many of our leaders are sick. They are addicted to wealth and power and lavish lifestyles. They are lost in a thicket of easy money, non-accountability, entitlement-based education, people-pleasing religion, and enablers whose own business plan is to seek crumbs from the wealthy and powerful.

Addiction has made them stupid, and they don’t know it. They won’t know it until they leave their gated cushions of mutual-affirmation and sit in a circle with other addicts, in an atmosphere of brutal honesty, admit their failings, seek the courage to make amends, and resolve to live sanely in the company of other sanity-seekers.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)

KRE/DEA END EHRICH