Lynch at Large

Bank of America has been very very good to me. It hurts my heart to draw attention to a very troubling development reported this past week. This hot steaming pile can be found in the San Francisco Chronicle. David Lazarus reports.

"If people want their severance packages, they have to train their replacements," a senior engineer at one of BofA's Bay Area facilities told me. "There's nothing in writing that says this -- the bank's been careful about that. But it's made clear at meetings what we're supposed to do."

It gets even better.

Shirley Norton, a BofA spokeswoman, confirmed that while workers aren't being explicitly told they have to train their replacements or risk losing severance pay, they are being instructed that severance pay is contingent on satisfactorily completing their jobs.

Completing your job includes training your replacement, which means, in most cases, bringing somebody from India up to speed on what you have been getting paid to do.

Why would BofA hire Indians to work in the United States?

"Because they don't actually work for Bank of America," the engineer replied. "They work for Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services, which are both in India. They do the work at half the cost of what a U.S. worker gets paid."

There is a lot more to this story. Get ready for the next round of BOA moves to encourage business with Latino customers. Call centers will be exported to Latin America.

BOA has been good to me, but not so good to the country that provides the infrastructure and security for it to do business and provide earnings for investors.