Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 901 posts

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#451

Post by zlg_codes »

phpisthebest wrote: post #253
bmulcahy wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What are the new revenue channels that will pay for all that extra staff (and considering it’s USPS, their pensions)? The federal government, unlike most other entities, does not need to match new revenue to new spending. It can and does create new money for any spending it deems worth it. Funding basic banking for all through the USPS is worth it.

>>> It can and does create new money for any spending it deems worth it. Yes, that is called inflation.... how is that working out for everyone that needs food, housing and energy?

Today's inflation was caused by greedy market forces, collusion, and government loan fraud, by those same capitalists.

Government spending on useful services, or helping their constituents get by on two one-time $600 payments did not create the current economic climate.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#452

Post by josephcsible »

raincom wrote: post #214
SpaceNoodled wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will Chase cancel my mortgage, too?

No, they don't; however they cancel your checking, savings, business checking, credit cards. Only exception is mortgages.

This reminds me of a common scam that casinos pull: if someone gets caught gambling when they weren't allowed to be, the casino will unwind everything if there was a net win, but will leave it stand if there was a net loss.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#453

Post by BetaDeltaAlpha »

WalterBright wrote: post #363
Clubber wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only do we subsidize their workforce, we pay for the police to arrest shoplifters for them.

Do you really want people to hire private police forces?

Safeway in SF does this (hiring private security, many off-duty cops) now.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#454

Post by shinryuu »

Kalium wrote: post #446

> “And in this scenario, you can’t really negotiate,” he said. “You aren’t talking with a person who has the power to tell you what went wrong and what didn’t go wrong.” I find this one of the most telling bits of this entire article. It says the quiet part out loud - people are often not looking purely to understand. People want information so they can negotiate, reason, or argue with the decisions.

Sure, if you feel that you are wronged then that is natural. Having your account closed for any reason is also strange.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#455

Post by hanniabu »

jdiff wrote: post #449
hanniabu wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum doesn't use mining and is incredibly energy efficient, estimated at 0.0026 TWh/yr (1/100th of Paypal) https://ethereum.org/en/energy-consumption/

Paypal has far more than 100x the adoption of Ethereum

Ethereum processes 6x more than PayPal

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#456

Post by josephcsible »

throw3823423 wrote: post #344
advael wrote: post #162

I'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem It's increasingly clear that automating important decisions like this is causing a lot of harm while removing most forms of recourse available to those affected. Coupled with the way automated decisions are used to perform and then launder fraud on a massive scale, maybe we should target laws at the automation itself: Require decisio…

I've been a part of a system like this (a financial system that happens to not be technically a bank). The system was constantly under attack by fraudsters: You could find subreddits with guides on how to try to outright rob us. So we had teams building detection systems that tied to detect said fraud as early as possible: Hopefully before we handed the fraudsters any money. Depending on how bad the score was, there…

> But a detailed explanation of why we thought something was fraudulent could (and sometimes would!) just lead to another fun reddit post where someone describes how to hide the fraud a little better.

If I were in charge, it'd be too bad for your company, and they'd have to give a detailed explanation every time even if that would be the result, because the alternative is way worse.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#457

Post by SllX »

robocat wrote: post #440
SllX wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t necessarily expect us to follow New Zealand’s example. We’ve accumulated a lot of methods for exchanging money without really discarding any in particular. New Zealand is a small country way out in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean 2.5K miles (or over 4K kilometers) away from its nearest neighbor and with a population smaller than NYC. The United States is 50 stubborn ass States plus the Fed’s occupati…

> with a population smaller than NYC Australia has a population bigger than NYC and "Australia is set to be a cheque-less society by the end of the decade, if the federal government has its way." Zealand has a population and land area similar to Oregon. Might as well say NZ has a much bigger population than Wyoming - NYC is irrelevant. Cheques have slowly disappeared because of economic reasons: the transaction costs…

Kinda missing the forest for the trees here. What I’m driving at is that New Zealand and the United States are not easily comparable and just because New Zealand is doing a thing it does not follow that the United States also shall successfully pursue and accomplish the same policy objectives. Even a straight comparison between Australia and New Zealand is difficult and both their system of government and their banking system are closer in form with each other than with the United States, and there's a lot fewer people in a lot fewer places to just straight up disagree and subvert the efforts and policy objectives of the Federal Government, no matter what they may be. If a Presidential candidate ever did make it a platform issue, you could probably expect his opponents to take the opposite approach.

What the United States lacks is the kind of central control that a Westminster-style of government can exercise, even over cash money and checks, and there are a lot more institutions with some say over the continued prevalence of cash so even as its usage declines it is unlikely to completely disappear even in our lifetimes. Even if Chase stops giving their customers checkbooks, it doesn’t mean M&T will, and even if M&T does, it doesn’t mean there won’t be a bank that makes it a point to offer free checkbooks as a value add to small business owners that want to continue issuing paper checks to their employees. The form money takes here tends to be additive, and it is rare for a system to ever completely disappear. I mean next on the chopping block is probably Zelle followed by ACH of all things now that we have FedNow, and even that’s not necessarily going to happen.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#458

Post by seattle_spring »

momirlan wrote: post #370
WalterBright wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." -- Karl Marx We don't need to imagine how that would work out. There are plenty of examples.

yes, there are the millions dead in various "cultural" and agri-"cultural revolutions, the millions dead in gulags because they opposed the horrors of communism. i grew up in it, and it makes me vomit when someone mentions that murderous ideology.

There’s a whole lot of spectrum between what GP’s parent is suggesting and communism. In fact, no one even brought up communism until the parent’s fairly vapid Marx quote. Is that the one that made you vomit?

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#459

Post by WalterBright »

refurb wrote: post #450
WalterBright wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is before social benefits Right, and it stopped going down.

From the data I’ve seen the poverty rate has trended down since the 60’s

https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/private/pdf/154286/...

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#460

Post by seattle_spring »

TheHiddenSun wrote: post #231
redox99 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Glad we have so much energy focusing on legit bankers instead of the crypto that is actually funding multiple US adversaries at this very moment Funny you criticize crypto, when it actually solves all the bullshit you're mentioning. It's so nice knowing for a fact that when I send or receive crypto, it will 100% arrive within moments, unlike the absolute shitfest that is international transfers (like SWIFT).

100% agree. Crypto today is the only way how you can take control of your own funds. What use is the money in your Bank account if the ruling political party can label you an ultra-right extremist and retroactively lock all your money down, just because of a single 1$ donation you did to a cause you believed to be right, like Canada did?

No one had their accounts closed in Canada purely based on a donation.
Post reply on HN