North Carolina treasurer Richard Moore recently proposed that the state intervene to prevent Wachovia Corp. from being acquired by California-based Wells Fargo & Co. Here are excerpts from the text explaining his reasoning (along with the reliably cantankerous and reflexively contrary muttered asides from your host):

This week’s news cycle began with stories about powerful leaders in Washington lining up to support a bailout of our automakers. The emphasis was on saving good jobs. In this economy, it is hard to imagine a nobler mission. Yet at the same time, our federal government is actually trying to put one of our countries’ great employers out of business, one that employs more people than General Motors.

Ahem. Wachovia, not the government, put itself on the brink of collapse. The federal government was only doing its job as a regulator when it told the bank to either sell itself to a healthier institution or risk being closed. Not quite “trying to put …[Wachovia] out of business.”

Wachovia provides 110,000 employees with good jobs, including 35,000 in North Carolina. These are the kind of jobs on which you can raise a family. Unlike Detroit’s automakers, Wachovia’s business model, while distressed right now, is not broken and does not face the same outsourcing pressures.

In reality, the auto companies and Wachovia share one important similarity: All were overseen by people who, through a combination of bad judgment and financial overreach, flew their planes into the mountainside. The banking industry’s business model may not be broken, but Wachovia’s sure is.

One day soon, good banks will be making money again, and, make no mistake about it, our nation’s fourth-largest bank is a good one. But our government’s arbitrary regulators demanded the end of an independent Wachovia just a few days before it bailed out the rest of the industry, denying shareholders the true value of their investment and shredding thousands of jobs in the process.

The feds “bailed out the rest of the industry”? Does the name Washington Mutual ring a bell? And remember that the feds closed down Indy Mac earlier this year, and stood aside as Lehman Bros. collapsed. Yes, Wachovia ended up on the wrong side of the bailout divide, but so did many others. It’s ridiculous to make it sound as if regulators are big meanies who arbitrarily picked on Wachovia.

But I do not believe it is too late to reverse this course to fight for an independent Wachovia. Not if we do the following:

* Encourage Judge Albert Diaz, a North Carolina business court judge, to strike down Wachovia’s grant to Wells Fargo of 39.9 percent of the voting stock of Wachovia before the merger. This issue is now before him, and shareholders of all North Carolina publicly traded companies will be wronged if this tactic is allowed to stand. It must be struck down as a matter of public policy.

As long as we’re talking about public policy, let’s consider the propriety of lobbying a judge as he considers a case. This is a legal matter, not a political one. Surely — hopefully — the state treasurer isn’t advocating a policy of law by applause meter.

It is also unfortunate that the top management of Wachovia, who advocated this arrangement, will stand to receive millions of dollars in golden parachute benefits for themselves — a sad but too familiar occurrence in corporate America. (This will be the same group of people who claim that breaking up the Wells Fargo deal will put Wachovia employees and shareholders in an even worse predicament.)

OK, I’ll concede this point. The managers who flew the plane into the mountainside shouldn’t get parachutes, golden or otherwise.

* Ask Wachovia shareholders to vote to defeat the merger.

To do this, we must reassure them that a plan exists to meet Wachovia’s short-term liquidity needs and that regulators will be presented with a powerful case for an independent Wachovia. I pledge to do everything in my power as Treasurer to make that case, including an effort to put together a multibillion-dollar re-capitalization package.

This guy is making me nervous. When he talks about using all his power as a top state official to “put together a multibillion dollar” rescue package, I start looking for a place to hide my money. Wells Fargo is putting $12 billion on the table to buy Wachovia (and not a dime of that is public money, by the way). If private investors had wanted to invest billions in Wachovia, they would have done so when they could have snapped up stock at $1 a share. (It’s now well above $5 a share.) Who’s going to top Wells Fargo’s price? My fear is that Moore wants us, the taxpayers, to get into the bidding.

* Finally, our nation’s fourth-largest bank must be given the same help as our third-, fifth-, sixth-, seventh- and eighth-largest banks got — access to the TARP, our government’s bailout plan. This would be an especially compelling request if matching private funds are raised — something the government this week said it wanted to see.

Try to sell that line to an American public that has already started to wonder about the federal bailout program: “You see, we want to undo a deal that requires no tax money and instead have the government throw billions into Wachovia so that our state pride won’t be wounded when one of our banks is taken over by an outsider.”

All of this will take a great deal of work, but we constantly tout North Carolina’s great business climate, and we frequently turn to tax dollars to attract new jobs. How about putting the same amount of effort in keeping the jobs we already have? It’s not too late. Let’s fight.

Told you. He’s planning to use to your money to undo this deal in the name of jobs — the overwhelming majority of which will likely survive anyway. Wells Fargo has virtually no presence in the East. Remember, it’s not buying Wachovia to close it down. It’s buying the bank to do business in all the places where Wachovia now operates.

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