Nervous Charlotte ponders the future of Wachovia

"It's been up and down. You can't sleep because you don't know what's going to happen," said Karen Brown, 31, who works at a local Wachovia branch. "The economy is so bad that if you lose your job, what's next?"

For Wachovia Corp., no one's quite sure.

A year ago, the bank's shares were trading for just under $60 as it and Tryon Street rival Bank of America Corp. kept making the billion-dollar deals that turned them from regional players into the anchors of the nation's retail banking industry.

This week, its shares price crushed by the weight of a deal gone bad to less than $10, Wachovia agreed to sell its banking operations for $2.1 billion to Citigroup Inc. On Friday, Wachovia reversed course and said it had instead reached an agreement to be acquired by San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. for $15.1 billion in stock.

Citi demanded Wachovia abide by the terms of its earlier deal, which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. helped broker and wants to see move ahead. Not so fast, said GOP Rep. Robin Hayes, who fired off a terse note to the FDIC on Friday with a warning to back down.

"My goal for Wachovia is to achieve the best outcome for employees, shareholders, customers and the community," Hayes said. "If the FDIC is going to push against that outcome, then we are ready to push them back--and it's going to be a hard push."

Got all that? If you do, you're doing better than most.

"Nobody knows what the impact will be to Charlotte under either deal, and anybody who tells you they do is either lying or being recklessly speculative," said Bob Morgan, president of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce. "This ball game is in the third or fourth inning of what looks like is going to be a long game."

At stake are the thousands of high-paying banking jobs that helped Charlotte largely weather the downturn in the nation's housing market and overall economy. Wachovia has 120,000 employees nationwide, including 20,000 in Charlotte, where it and Bank of America have long been the leading cooperate citizens.