Everyone, I know, is shocked – shocked! – to learn that Wachovia is giving higher incentives to employees who sell customers a tricky type of mortgage that often turns into a neverending trap.

The so-called Pick-A-Payment mortgages can easily lead to foreclosure or even bankruptcy for customers who wind up seeing their loan balance increase every month.

Since slimeball mortgage practices by banks are one of the main reasons the U.S. economy is tanking, you’d think someone at Wachovia might’ve figured out that dicey loans probably aren’t a good idea right now. After all, Wachovia’s mortgage practices are already in the toilet, with the company having to use up more and more money to cover bad loans in the current terrible housing market.

The Observer’s story about the bank’s practices, although certainly welcome, seemed meek in tone, reflecting that paper’s skittishness about criticizing any of the big banks. Consider this sentence: “Consumer advocates worry that higher incentives could encourage employees to sell loans that are not appropriate for borrowers.”

To which I can only reply: No shit – the country is suffering a national epidemic of banks screwing their customers, and the O frames the story as if there’s something surprising in the fact that our leading “corporate citizens” just maybe, perhaps, might not care quite as much about their customers’ welfare as they pretend to in their commercials.

The daily paper’s Rick Rothacker did a good job of digging up the dicey mortgage incentives information. Let’s hope the O keeps it up. There are plenty of people in Charlotte who’ve been the victims of the big banks’ layoffs and other corporate treacheries – and plenty of citizens who’ve seen their interest rates and payments rise during the current financial gang-rape of the American public. I don’t think readers, listeners and viewers are exactly going to scream bloody murder if the media gets more serious about reporting on the banks’ dangerous, and destructive, misconduct. In fact, we want more of it.