This is the second time a bank unilaterally closed an account. My reply to this one sums up my feelings:
Hi, I don’t understand why you’re closing, and you give yourself the right not to say why. Customer satisfaction is evidently not your concern, so I don’t want your services either. Your competitors will gladly serve me, not that you care of course. Regards, A.
The previous closure got me in my current pickle: having been a US ‘legal alien’ for a decade, I kept my local Credit Union account open & solvent, in order to later manage my US pensions. Unilateral closure meant I had no means to manage them, even with a Social Security Number — I was a local resident in the 5 years legal aliens were given them apparently — so I sought help to get US account, and one thing leading to another I fell victim to a scam that deprived me of my pension.
Moving on, let me tell you a little story about the Square Mile, the financial sector in London, still an important financial center, after having influenced global finances in its heyday of Colonial Britain. King Charles II apparently granted the Square Mile dispensation from Common Law — I’m no economist and only an amateur medievalist, so I’m neither researching nor quoting sources, just seeking “the story behind the story” — to facilitate business practices apparently, as that helped 17th c. Royal household finances too. Remember these were early days of Parliament and Restorarion.
Update: a short take on the same:
And did you know that a century prior Queen Elizabeth I allowed privateers to do the dirty work of harassing the Spanish Armada on behalf of the Navy? Meaning there always had been a cozy relationship among royalty and business. That lead in fact to colonizations commercial rather than political bend — and the succeeding Commonwealth of Nations — as distinct from other colonial regimes of outright exploitation.
Another little gem is that the early and sometimes pioneering development of topographical surveys, geological societies, mint and post office led them to be called The Ordnance Survey, The Geological Society, The Royal Mint and The Royal Mail or Post Office, without a country qualifier as they’re the first.
What I’m trying to say, is that the early development of government and business practices in times of political and economic crucibles led to fast rules and practices in a self-referential context. Common Law indeed emerged as an alternative to Royal law to protect growing middle class / burghers and established rural then working classes against incumbent owning class / nobility. But this dispensation neatly sidestepped that for the mutual benefit of owning class ‘sensu lato’, meaning royalty and business.
… So same as privateers and pirates, the difference between bankers and bandits is that bankers have the law at their back!
The other misconception is that we deposit money, salaries & savings into said banks in order to make “our money work for us”. Basically by tying the value of money to time, earning interest protects your liquid assets depreciation… assuming one has a growing economy that capitalism relies on. And colonialist expansion — be it political / social as originally or cultural / technical as currently — to suppport that. But if you really look at it, we’re working for the banks not the other way around. They consider our assets we entrusted them as their piggy bank... And various financial crashes show how well they do that! And in case there’s any doubt as to government finances collusion, just look at where former US President and current UK Prime Minister come from — I will not repeat their names and contribute to their brand, our coying media does it plenty, thank you very much— let me close with another anecdote.
You know what started Brexit? Its original date was the day before the start of EU oversight over offshore accounts (Eurosystem Oversight Report, 2017-2020): the then Prime Minister was simply protecting his billionaire friends; simple, everything else is obfuscation and prevarication to bamboozle a nation out of a union (Medium). Again to dispel all doubt, remember that the Referendum was indicative not a mandate: the next Prime Minister made it a mandate, and there was no lack of eager MP’s to play fast&loose — Brits will remember one who lounged along the Parliament bench as only the entitled would — and have the Queen ratify it before anyone woke up and smelled the coffee!
In conclusion, we live in an era where ethics are dispensed with across the board, from your foreign accounts to your country’s foreign policy. And this has roots centuries in the past that rumble on to today. I coined a while ago “welcome back to the new Middle Ages” (Medium) as we’re on a down-slope from colonial & capitalist expansion (Medium) past peak oil (IEA) and peak population (UN) facing climate change (Medium).
