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Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

nytimes.com

271–280 of 901 posts

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"Gamed" by whom? Do you assume poor people are all lazy, undeserving, criminal, and cheating? Have you ever accompanied a poor or disabled person to a county assistance office to see what the forms or process entails? Do you know how SNAP or WIC works?

> all

I never said "all".

Some years back, and acquaintance of mine detailed how he gamed the system. He'd work until he met the minimum number of employed weeks to qualify for unemployment, then he'd do a lousy job so he'd get laid off. He'd then go on unemployment. Being unemployed required him to look for a job, so he'd look for a job, and flunk the job interview. When the unemployment compensation ran out, then he'd get a job again. Over and over and over.

BTW, when he was "unemployed", he'd take off-the-books jobs.

A businessman acquaintance told me how he'd found some well qualified people he wanted to hire. They said they'd take the job, but only after their unemployment compensation ran out.

The Seattle Times ran an article a couple decades ago (wish I'd saved it) where they went around interviewing people on welfare. They'd ask "what would you do if the welfare was cut off?" The answer was "get a job." They interviewed people in a car with fishing gear. "Where are you going?" "Fishing" "Don't you have jobs?" "No, we get welfare." "Wouldn't you rather have a job?" "No, we'd rather go fishing."

Sure, there are people who should be on welfare. But there are a lot of people gaming it.

Every government program designed to hand out money if specific requirements are met results in companies and individuals springing up to game it.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#274
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cory Doctorow has talked about how "they" test these kinds of things on captive "audiences" - mainly children and prisoners - before expanding to the rest of us. I tend to add marginalized groups to that list. Even when a person can nominally be held accountable, it doesn't matter if you can't reach them, protected by an administrative or institutional barrier of some kind. Standardized testing and remote learning mo…

[flagged]

You can’t game something when the maximum award is still designed to be Not Enough On Its Own. That describes quite literally every US government aid program— from food stamps and school lunch debt at the very bottom of the financial ladder, to grants+loans for those who have demonstrated the academic merit to get into college, to healthcare and social security for literally every citizen in this entire country.

There is not a single program in the US, by careful design, that can give “too much”. Yet we still spend so much money on the bureaucracy trying to disqualify anyone from their own programs.

Imagine how much we’d save, socially (less homelessness! no death for lack of healthcare! a more educated and informed country!) but also maybe financially, if we actually _gave our people what they need_.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#275
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a year traveling in SE Asia circa 2012 and I didn’t have any problems with my bank account. n=1 and all that, and I didn’t have income coming from outside of the US, but I had countless ATM withdrawals and credit card spends. The only time a compliance officer has been in touch with me was when I was moving money to crypto exchanges.

I did something similar and my banker told me to knock it off.

What exactly did they tell you?

I've been doing it for the last 7 years without any problems.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#277
post #41

Banks hide behind Bank Secrecy Act and other regulations in order to debank people. Chase closed my account, and the reason Chase gave: "Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor transactions that flow through our customers' accounts. After careful consideration, we decided to close your account because of unexpected activity on these or another Chase account." I didn't dispute any t…

> Regulators want to see a certain number of SAR and CTR filings

I didn't experience that when I was on board of directors.

In my personal affairs I had a checking account force closed because of their auditors - not the regulators. Rumors and myths about enforcement have internal people and contractor (compliance software) going too far. No recourse individually on this behavior.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved from the US to Yemen from 2006-2008. After I got the travel details figured out I realized I would need some way of getting money while I was there. Freaked out for a bit, figured that with the war on terror ongoing it would prove to be incredibly difficult. Turns out my ATM card worked fine while I was over there. I did let the bank know I would be there and I kept my address in the US though. My card got lo…

I got put on a watch list during my time in Saudi and Abu Dhabi. Didnt affect my banking but every plane ticket i got for years had “SSSS”[0] printed/sharpied on it and all my luggage would get a secondary hand-search at every stop immediately pre-boarding both domestically and internationally. I am just average white US citizen who was working on oil rigs but most likely some of my whatsapp/facebook/iMessage contact…

Ah yes, I was wondering why NYT was reporting on this instead of Breitbart or perhaps Coindesk like you usually see, and it's probably because a bunch of people are about to get debanked for donating to various Palestine-related organizations.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#279
post #41

Banks hide behind Bank Secrecy Act and other regulations in order to debank people. Chase closed my account, and the reason Chase gave: "Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor transactions that flow through our customers' accounts. After careful consideration, we decided to close your account because of unexpected activity on these or another Chase account." I didn't dispute any t…

My close friend was scammed via interac and bank closed his account, cards, and he was banned from interac even though he was the one that got scammed. Bitcoin solves that, but Bitcoin has another issue why banks win - if you are scammed with your card - you get your money back or if you forget password - you still have your money, if you are scammed with Bitcoin - you basically lose, if you forget your password - you lose. Just depends on what spectrum you are.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gamed" by whom? Do you assume poor people are all lazy, undeserving, criminal, and cheating? Have you ever accompanied a poor or disabled person to a county assistance office to see what the forms or process entails? Do you know how SNAP or WIC works?

> all I never said "all". Some years back, and acquaintance of mine detailed how he gamed the system. He'd work until he met the minimum number of employed weeks to qualify for unemployment, then he'd do a lousy job so he'd get laid off. He'd then go on unemployment. Being unemployed required him to look for a job, so he'd look for a job, and flunk the job interview. When the unemployment compensation ran out, then h…

Almost like we should just blanket-provide the same amount of aid and safety net to everyone, cut out any and all pre-qualifications, and completely change our tax system to ensure all costs are recaptured by a progressive tax system.

That way someone who used aid and becomes wealthy would pay into it in the future. Right now our systems more or less just keep you where you are.

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