Virginia Hammerness did an interview with CBS 5 in which she at one point said her grandfather, who founded what was originally the Bank of Italy, is "rolling over in his grave" at what is going on.
She blasts the huge bonuses these people are giving themselves. I have one major question though, If she is still a significant stockholder, didn't she know what was going on? According to Hammerness:
"I think its totally repulsive," Hammerness said when asked what she thinks of Bank of America now. "What idiots, what kind of idiots are running that bank?"
Hammerness directed some of her criticsm at the bank's decision to go ahead with the purchase of the near-bankrupt Merill Lynch brokerage, even after learning that huge bonuses were paid out to Lynch employees right after the deal was announced.
"They bought it and then, you know, they found out before the deal was consumated that the head of Merrill Lynch paid all those bonuses to people. Bank of America should have said forget it," said Hammerness.
It seems Merrill Lynch pulled the old Kansas City Shuffle: Everyone was looking right while they were stuffing their pockets to the left.
According to Hammerness, big bonuses were not the way the bank was originally run:
Huge bonuses were not her grandfather's way of doing business, she said.
A.P. Giannini gave away millions, but died with an estate of only $500,000. He turned down a $1.7 million dollar bonus that the bank wanted to give him, saying they should use it to help their customers instead.
Gianniani became a legend right after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. After his bank burned down, he set up a wooden plank on two barrels along the street and made loans. All it took was a handshake and he later said every loan was repaid.
But Hammerness wondered aloud whether she would even be able to get a loan today from Bank of America.
"If i just went in as Mrs. Hammerness, I don't know, I might not be able to," she observed. "It's just bad, it's greed, greed, greed."
I still find it hard to believe that she had no clue,since she still holds a large amount of stock. At any rate, I bank with BoA and am pretty worried about my money. Where do you put it these days? You think one bank is strong, as I did a few months ago with BoA, and next thing you know, they are circling the drain with the Tidy Bowl Man. I'm behind President Obama's stimulus all the way. I'm 100% behind helping out the people affected by the housing crisis, good, bad, or indifferent. We are in very scary times and now is not the time to nit-pick.