Periodic reminder that Helen & Lorenzo are not American!
Lorenzo takes a more global approach than I do, but our values, instincts, and formative experiences are all from outside the US. I may be a lawyer, for example, but I am not an American lawyer.
I understand American legal reasoning and can interpret American law (because the US is part of the larger, English-origin common law family of jurisdictions) but I have never practised there except in a very limited "let's make a deal" sense, acting for an Australian, English, or Scottish client.
I also dislike what British commentators call "Americabrain", which is importing US culture-war nonsense into the UK and EU (on which point, I agree with French president Emmanuel Macron). The UK has very different racial history, for example - we abolished slavery and then tried to extirpate it globally while half the US still thought slavery was absolutely fine.
I will persist in drawing on UK and Commonwealth law and history for this reason, and I frankly expect Americans to keep up. Google is your friend!
Poor people (who by definition cannot maintain large balances) are frequently charged exorbitant banking fees.
The large national banks (in the U.S.) frequently charge account maintenance fees that require account holders to work 2-4 hours per month to pay for those accounts.
That is an enormous part of an already stressed budget.
A bank account and an associated debit card is a requirement of normal life (to get paid, to collect social security, to order things from Amazon).
A banking charter requires the bank to serve the community. The poor continue to be a part of the community.
The partial solution for the poor who don't have a bank account is to use check cashing services and drive to pay cash. Very expensive.
This explains why when we changed bank accounts for my 89 year old mother here in Western NY state we were asked if she was Politically exposed.
And this is just POLITICS IS POWER and nothing more.
Fortunately we answered NO.
And simply put this is just the exercise of power and just this sort of thing that sent the war weary populations of Afghanistan and Iraq back to war in 2003 - we had won it all- that set the Afghans against us in the 1970s, then the Iranians who were far more familiar with MIT than the CIA (Massachusettitti being a 1970s Iranian slang word, oh yes] into revolution in the 1970s and without fail leads to happy smiling and peaceful people to adopt stern countenance, grow beards, arm themselves and see the Yankees off. This includes the Amish who yes were sporting TRUMP 2020 on their buggies and lawns [they live down the road from me]. In fairness the Amish had beards already, but the Amish being political is End Times type Omen. As of this writing the Amish haven't returned to their Anabaptist ways although a renewed interest in Jan Zizka has been noted in popular culture.
The Anabaptists were the Al Qaeda of 500 years ago in Bohemia you know.
There's just something about Theocratic Hypocrites that pisses people off.
"HMRC needs to accept that a bit of lost tax revenue is a bloody sight better then Travellers up and down the country actively pushed into a life of crime."
1. It's about power not tax revenue.
2. The Travellers like all crime and displaced people serve Powers that be as both club and boogeyman as hired gangs and scapegoats - and utterly expendable. In America the same marginalized communities provide jobs for our in house colonialism and the prison industry, social workers, rehab. I don't know about HMG but in America the demand for criminals far outstrips the readily available supply, requiring comprehensive measures for recycling and renewables that would turn the actual Green Energy types Green with Envy were they to look into emulation of these successful public/private businesses.
"The way to defeat one’s opponents is with argument."
Helen, this is Childish.
And it's not true now even if it ever was.
The Enlightenment was always fantasy and now under pressure it died even as mere image or ideal.
The Ideal for them's running things is a version of Ghenghis Khan's what is good [with other people doing the dirty work of course. Say those Traveller fellows].
I keep coming back to Napoleon’s Dictum, otherwise known as Hanlon’s Razor. “Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.”
Few of our lawmakers have ever had a job outside of politics or the law. They have no idea how ordinary people live. If a law has undesirable effects they amend it, adding complications, instead of repealing it. In software that guarantees trouble.
The legal principle that it is better for 10 guilty people to go free, than for one innocent to suffer, implies that laws should be written to minimize inconvenience to honest people, even if that means some wrongdoers slip through the cracks.
Thank you for writing this, this whole piece was immensely helpful and informative. Things seem even worse than I thought, but at least there's some good writing about it, so there's the positive 😆
Lo, I entreat, let us grasp hold of reason and shun the descent into madness. Allow individuals their lawful political opinions, and venture forth into the arena of debate to conquer adversaries with the prowess of argument, not the treachery of covert financial sabotage.
Thank you for the view on debanking from a professional in the field.
However, the Farage fiasco was heavily oriented toward diversity and inclusion. The dossier on Farage was dripping in libellous accusations of racism and all the "phobias". This is new. Where does it come from?
Please don't ban me, but this post which I pretty much agree with is not really about corporate finance but about private, retail and and commercial banking.
If you don't ban me for irreducible pedantry I'll make a much more constructive comment on one of the recent posts I have bookmarked 😀
Not a Brit here, I saw "Traveler" used a couple times in this piece. Based on context cues is this a euphemism for Gypsies / Roma, immigrants in general?
I would love to see how the concept of "PEP" is actually applied. It sounds like anyone of a certain level of prominence is one, or perhaps eligible to be one, but it's not clear how the designation occurs and triggers one of these de-bankings.
In Farage's case it seems to have just been a pretext.
“BDS advocates—like the rest of us—have both freedom of speech and the duty to engage in debate. So do their opponents. The way to defeat one’s opponents is with argument, not by stealthing around in the background to shut down their bank accounts (or seeking to get them sacked or disbarred).”
The Left (not liberals) doesn’t play by those rules. As everything is “structural” this and that, free speech is an instrumental value, not a fundamental value. Attacking free speech, canceling, debanking, etc. is how the Left counters the structural power of the Right (aka liberals and conservatives).
Periodic reminder that Helen & Lorenzo are not American!
Lorenzo takes a more global approach than I do, but our values, instincts, and formative experiences are all from outside the US. I may be a lawyer, for example, but I am not an American lawyer.
I understand American legal reasoning and can interpret American law (because the US is part of the larger, English-origin common law family of jurisdictions) but I have never practised there except in a very limited "let's make a deal" sense, acting for an Australian, English, or Scottish client.
I also dislike what British commentators call "Americabrain", which is importing US culture-war nonsense into the UK and EU (on which point, I agree with French president Emmanuel Macron). The UK has very different racial history, for example - we abolished slavery and then tried to extirpate it globally while half the US still thought slavery was absolutely fine.
I will persist in drawing on UK and Commonwealth law and history for this reason, and I frankly expect Americans to keep up. Google is your friend!
Different but related topic.
Poor people (who by definition cannot maintain large balances) are frequently charged exorbitant banking fees.
The large national banks (in the U.S.) frequently charge account maintenance fees that require account holders to work 2-4 hours per month to pay for those accounts.
That is an enormous part of an already stressed budget.
A bank account and an associated debit card is a requirement of normal life (to get paid, to collect social security, to order things from Amazon).
A banking charter requires the bank to serve the community. The poor continue to be a part of the community.
The partial solution for the poor who don't have a bank account is to use check cashing services and drive to pay cash. Very expensive.
Immoral to gouge the poor.
I have been saying for some time that subjective AML laws and regulations would be used for more authoritarian measures.
I do happen to know them, and how they are applied and enforced, here in the US like the back of my hand.
This explains why when we changed bank accounts for my 89 year old mother here in Western NY state we were asked if she was Politically exposed.
And this is just POLITICS IS POWER and nothing more.
Fortunately we answered NO.
And simply put this is just the exercise of power and just this sort of thing that sent the war weary populations of Afghanistan and Iraq back to war in 2003 - we had won it all- that set the Afghans against us in the 1970s, then the Iranians who were far more familiar with MIT than the CIA (Massachusettitti being a 1970s Iranian slang word, oh yes] into revolution in the 1970s and without fail leads to happy smiling and peaceful people to adopt stern countenance, grow beards, arm themselves and see the Yankees off. This includes the Amish who yes were sporting TRUMP 2020 on their buggies and lawns [they live down the road from me]. In fairness the Amish had beards already, but the Amish being political is End Times type Omen. As of this writing the Amish haven't returned to their Anabaptist ways although a renewed interest in Jan Zizka has been noted in popular culture.
The Anabaptists were the Al Qaeda of 500 years ago in Bohemia you know.
There's just something about Theocratic Hypocrites that pisses people off.
AMISH FOR TRUMP PICS
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.esquire.com%2Fnews-politics%2Fnews%2Fa47403%2Fthere-is-an-amish-pac-it-is-pro-trump%2F&psig=AOvVaw3SaCUuRV3damSTmyY4nD25&ust=1690819483547000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=2ahUKEwiBrevG57aAAxUaEmIAHSX9BjQQjRx6BAgAEAw
"HMRC needs to accept that a bit of lost tax revenue is a bloody sight better then Travellers up and down the country actively pushed into a life of crime."
1. It's about power not tax revenue.
2. The Travellers like all crime and displaced people serve Powers that be as both club and boogeyman as hired gangs and scapegoats - and utterly expendable. In America the same marginalized communities provide jobs for our in house colonialism and the prison industry, social workers, rehab. I don't know about HMG but in America the demand for criminals far outstrips the readily available supply, requiring comprehensive measures for recycling and renewables that would turn the actual Green Energy types Green with Envy were they to look into emulation of these successful public/private businesses.
"The way to defeat one’s opponents is with argument."
Helen, this is Childish.
And it's not true now even if it ever was.
The Enlightenment was always fantasy and now under pressure it died even as mere image or ideal.
The Ideal for them's running things is a version of Ghenghis Khan's what is good [with other people doing the dirty work of course. Say those Traveller fellows].
Enlightement's dead, bury it.
I keep coming back to Napoleon’s Dictum, otherwise known as Hanlon’s Razor. “Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.”
Few of our lawmakers have ever had a job outside of politics or the law. They have no idea how ordinary people live. If a law has undesirable effects they amend it, adding complications, instead of repealing it. In software that guarantees trouble.
The legal principle that it is better for 10 guilty people to go free, than for one innocent to suffer, implies that laws should be written to minimize inconvenience to honest people, even if that means some wrongdoers slip through the cracks.
Thank you for writing this, this whole piece was immensely helpful and informative. Things seem even worse than I thought, but at least there's some good writing about it, so there's the positive 😆
As promised Helen, Flaubert writes from the Ether...
https://chat.openai.com/share/e5ea0c99-7595-456d-a598-91004f5fb539
Lo, I entreat, let us grasp hold of reason and shun the descent into madness. Allow individuals their lawful political opinions, and venture forth into the arena of debate to conquer adversaries with the prowess of argument, not the treachery of covert financial sabotage.
The Mark of the Beast is rapidly going from Revelation to reality.
Thank you for the view on debanking from a professional in the field.
However, the Farage fiasco was heavily oriented toward diversity and inclusion. The dossier on Farage was dripping in libellous accusations of racism and all the "phobias". This is new. Where does it come from?
It is straight out of the WEF song sheet - see https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/the-world-economic-forum
and https://www.weforum.org/projects/community-of-chief-diversity-and-inclusion-officers
Please don't ban me, but this post which I pretty much agree with is not really about corporate finance but about private, retail and and commercial banking.
If you don't ban me for irreducible pedantry I'll make a much more constructive comment on one of the recent posts I have bookmarked 😀
A guy I went to school with works for the credit union as a regional manager. He's gone over some of how it's structured.
Not a Brit here, I saw "Traveler" used a couple times in this piece. Based on context cues is this a euphemism for Gypsies / Roma, immigrants in general?
I would love to see how the concept of "PEP" is actually applied. It sounds like anyone of a certain level of prominence is one, or perhaps eligible to be one, but it's not clear how the designation occurs and triggers one of these de-bankings.
In Farage's case it seems to have just been a pretext.
“BDS advocates—like the rest of us—have both freedom of speech and the duty to engage in debate. So do their opponents. The way to defeat one’s opponents is with argument, not by stealthing around in the background to shut down their bank accounts (or seeking to get them sacked or disbarred).”
The Left (not liberals) doesn’t play by those rules. As everything is “structural” this and that, free speech is an instrumental value, not a fundamental value. Attacking free speech, canceling, debanking, etc. is how the Left counters the structural power of the Right (aka liberals and conservatives).