No matter how bad things get, there’s always someone who’s even worse off than you.  And because we’re all human, we can’t help but take a little comfort in that.

I just read a story that may make you feel a little better about the losses that the stock market has handed you in the last year or so.  It concerns the giant Chinese aluminum company called (appropriately enough) Aluminum Corporation of China (ACH), although its friends just call it Chinalco.

Lots of Chinese companies, especially the state-owned ones, have been working hard to get control of the resources they need to expand.  Chinese oil companies like CNOOC and China Petroleum have been aggressively pursuing equity stakes in oil ventures around the world.

China would like to avoid dealing with another hard-bargaining resource giant like the Brazilian miner Vale, which has been holding China’s feet to the fire over iron ore prices.  So, back in February, in a bid to gain more direct control of the mineral resources it needs to serve the growing Chinese economy, Chinalco (together with Alcoa) took a 9% equity stake in Rio Tinto.  Rio Tinto is an international mining colossus based in Great Britain, so Chinalco and Alcoa engaged the London office of an international bank to buy and hold the shares for them.

Unfortunately, that bank was Lehman Brothers … which is now bankrupt.

With about $14 billion of Rio stock sitting in an account in a bankrupt bank, China is understandably vexed about the situation.  China holds that the equity was held in a separate custodial account, and can in no way be considered an asset of the bank.

Despite that reasonable contention, the Chinalco/Alcoa stake in Rio is frozen while the officials in charge of liquidating Lehman’s assets decide what to do.  Anyone who thinks that China will just sit twiddling its thumbs while the largest foreign investments ever made by one of its companies goes down the drain is just fooling themselves.  Speculation is running wild that international diplomacy, as much as U.S. and U.K. bankruptcy law, will determine whether Chinalco will be made whole.

No investing moral here, just a chance for a little schadenfreude, or even a little actual sympathy if you’re inclined that way.  Needless to say, China will think twice about how its big overseas investments are handled in the future, with some justifiable skepticism about engaging the services of an investment bank.

And if you’re just dying for a moral, it would be this: Unsettled times can sometimes bite you on the … uh … ankle, even when you’ve done everything right.