From the Dept. of Things That Sound Totally Illegitimate

New York, NY -- Um, right, so the Chinese Communist Party is now telling Bank of America it can't sell its stake in China Construction Bank, one of China's biggest lenders. The CCP, in other words, has effectively frozen BoA's assets.

That's great. That doesn't sound sketchy in the least. I see a bright future for us all, given that the management of a bank deemed "way the hell too big to fail" is run by people with the decision-making capabilities to allow a significant amount of their assets to be held by the CCP.

(On a side note, I'm beginning to understand how it is that the dumbest lacrosse players managed to get jobs after college with the biggest banks: Because banks aren't morally lacking; they're lacking in brains and sense. Finance, like a Wal-Mart, is full of half-witted, low-skilled salespeople who aren't allowed to unionize.)


Heckuva job, Kenny!

Anyone know of any good Icelandic banks?

And now for your moment of zen: The FT reports the following:

BofA shelves $3bn plan to cut CCB stake

By Sundeep Tucker in Hong Kong and Jamil Anderlini in Beijing

Published: December 18 2008 23:32 | Last updated: December 18 2008 23:32

Bank of America has shelved a $3bn (€2.1bn) sale of China Construction Bank stock following objections from Beijing, igniting fears that some cash-strapped overseas investors could struggle to offload their lucrative holdings in the country’s banks.

The US bank, which in 2005 was part of a wave of foreign investment into Chinese banks, last week hired UBS to help sell a chunk of Hong Kong-listed shares to reduce its overall ­holding in CCB to less than 17 per cent.

The offer was priced at a discount of 15 per cent to CCB’s current share price and was quickly covered by US and European institutional investors, said people familiar with the matter.

However, only hours before it was due to be unveiled on ­Monday morning, the share sale was pulled on the instructions of Ken Lewis, BofA chairman and chief executive, following a phone call with Guo Shuqing, his CCB counterpart, according to people familiar with the situation.

The precise reason for the 11th-hour abandonment remains unclear, but dealmakers in the region believe that the Chinese government was unhappy about the timing of the share sale, the first such attempted divestment by a foreign investor following the expiry of a lock-in period.

The share sale could have triggered a fall in CCB’s share price just as Beijing is trying to garner support for its largest banks and arrest a stock market slide.

Foreign financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Dresdner Bank, Temasek and Royal Bank of Scotland, hold shares in China’s leading banks worth billions of dollars and analysts say they could be tempted to sell down stakes to raise capital when their three-year lock-in periods start to expire from next month.

“Bank of America cancelling those trades has made the other foreigners realise they don’t exit at their discretion; they exit at the discretion of the Chinese government,” said one Asian dealmaker who asked not to be identified.

The Chinese government cannot prevent trading of Hong Kong-listed shares, but deal­makers said it was likely that BofA was warned of repercussions to its future business on the mainland if it carried out the sale.

Beleaguered Workers Turn to Sit-Down Strikes

BOULDER, Colorado -- The laid-off employees of the Republic Doors and Windows factory in Chicago's North End are refusing to leave the factory. The company laid off 250 workers, and the former employees are claiming that Republic failed to properly notify them of the impending layoffs, the New York Times reported Monday. The workers have occupied the building since Friday, and they have no intention of leaving any time soon.

As the Times noted, the sit-in is vaguely reminiscent of the strikes in Michigan in the 1930's that led to the creation of the United Auto Workers union. One of the most important of these was the strike at the General Motors Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint in 1936-37, when workers occupied the plant for 44 days before management caved to their demands. Here's an article from the Detroit News chronicling those events, which were also mentioned in Michael Moore's documentary Roger & Me:



Close to 1,000 workers were holed up in Plant No. 1, surrounded by 4,000 National Guardsmen, and there were a number of violent clashes during the long siege; the action was part of a nationwide strike at GM plants that involved 135,000 workers in 35 plants in 14 states. That's a far cry from these 250 window assemblers, but in these tough times, someone has got to stand up (or sit down) to save their jobs.

The Republic employees are members of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, or UE - check out their website to see what you can do to help these workers.

Another party implicated in these layoffs is Bank of America, which is well on its way to becoming exactly that - the only bank in America. Republic claims it had to cut vacation and severance pay because BoA had revoked their line of credit; this came not long after the bank had received billions in taxpayer dollars to restore its ability to lend money to customers.

New England residents learned not to trust Bank of America years ago. In 2004, after acquiring FleetBoston bank, BoA laid off more than 1,000 workers in Massachusetts after making repeated promises that they would maintain Fleet's current levels of employment as a condition of the merger. I don't know how implicated they are in this Republic deal, but basically, they can go to hell, and I will never, ever bank with them.