Sharp-eyed Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby nails the absurdity of Wachovia CEO Ken Thompson groveling at the feet of the slavery reparations crowd:

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, and Wachovia wasn’t founded until 1879. The slaves for which Thompson was so apologetic were owned decades before the Civil War, when slavery was still lawful throughout the South. They were owned not by Wachovia but by the Bank of Charleston and the Georgia Railroad and Banking Co. — two of the approximately 400 financial institutions dating back to 1781 that over the centuries merged with or were acquired by other institutions that eventually became part of the conglomerate known today as Wachovia.

In other words, Thompson’s apology was for something Wachovia didn’t do, in an era when it didn’t exist, under laws it didn’t break. And as an act of contrition for this wrong it never committed, it can now expect to pay millions of dollars to activists for a wrong they never suffered.

As Jacoby notes the next act in the this drama will be Wachovia attempting to pay off any and all activists who deem Thompson’s apology insufficient, afterall this is a bank and a bank has money. This is a familiar game that rapidly expanding banks likes Wachovia and Bank of America have long had to play to win approval of their various mergers under the Community Reinvestment Act. To keep community groups from crying “redlining” to federal regulators, thus triggering CRA restrictions on interstate mergers, banks handed out grants like party favors.

Now groups connected to the Nation of Islam are already sniffing around Wachovia. I figure if Thompson’s apology means anything, he will not mind paying such groups off out of his own pocket.

His compensation package for 2004 was a cool $18 million with another $57.7 million in options on the books for the future. That way Wachovia’s customers, people like me and a very satisfied customer I might add, will not be asked to make up the difference for Wachovia’s shakedown fund.