| -Caveat Lector-
http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/neighborhood_bankerman.htm Your Friendly Neighborhood Bankerman by Russell Madden As repositories for much of average citizens' money, banks have long been a favorite pressure point for the machinations of politicians intent on furthering the modern police state that is present day America. Since large numbers of individuals have relatively simple financial needs that rarely extend beyond checking and savings accounts, they are rather unsophisticated and usually rationally ignorant of the more elaborate and private means of utilizing and protecting their relatively meager monetary assets. People can, of course, conduct their finances separate from formal institutions such as banks and credit unions. Such a choice, however, carries with it substantial inconveniences. Cashing monthly paychecks, paying bills, and making large purchases such as a car or a house range from difficult to impossible outside the State-controlled and -directed banking system. Indeed, the old joke about a business owner looking mystified at cash offered in payment and asking, "What's this?" becomes less and less a joke with each passing month. Once upon a time, banks were primarily private and independent entities. In the Nineteenth Century, for example, banks issued their own "money," i.e., claims for real money, i.e., gold, and relied upon their reputations to become successful. Customers rewarded bankers they trusted by depositing more of their wealth for safekeeping. They punished bad bankers by withdrawing their funds. If enough individuals lost their confidence in a particular bank, a "run on the bank" occurred as people en masse demanded real money for the paper claims they held to their wealth. Such relative freedom, however, has long been a stranger to the financial world. The State did not like competition besting it in the monetary realm. Over the years and decades, it slowly drove free banking into extinction. Reserve requirements that created instability in financial transactions; legal tender laws that forced people to accept only government scrip in payment of debts; repudiation of gold and then silver certificates that robbed people of real money; and unconstitutional abandonment of the gold standard aided the State in its silent theft-by-inflation as it monetized its unlawful debts and unobtrusively destroyed the savings of prudent citizens who suspected too late what evil was being perpetrated in the name of "protecting" them. The establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 along with the obscenity that is the federal income tax combined with a Great Depression created and deepened by State-interference to set the stage for more virulent infection of the banking world by the American police state. FDIC "insurance" encouraged bankers to take unwarranted risks and rewarded reckless financiers at the expense of wise ones. President Richard "I-Am-Not-a-Crook" Nixon's expansion of the War on Drugs led to reporting requirements of any deposits or withdrawals of money more than $10,000...though, of course, depositing or withdrawing less than that amount can get you arrested, as well, for "conspiracy" to evade reporting requirements. The Know-Your-Customer law that mandated banks monitor — and report — your spending habits for "unusual" peaks or irregularities died a welcome death after massive citizen protest...then was quietly resurrected after the tragedy of the World Trade Center attacks. This vampiric beast has just barely begun to suck the last drops of freedom pulsing feebly through the financial veins of this country. If the War on Drugs won't get you, the War on Terrorism will. Sadly, the very institution that should stand up for your right to privacy — the bank you employ, i.e., that you pay, to provide you financial services — is eager to thrust you into the jaws of the red-eyed creature thirsting for your liberty. The latest installment in this travesty comes to you courtesy of der Busch Administration, its misbegotten offspring, zie Patriot Act, and der Treasury Department as it stalks the midnight realm of monetary slavery. That ol' debbil, "money laundering," that magically picks ten grand from the air as the figure favored by mobsters and drug lords for "cleaning" their money, is once again tiredly trotted out as the justification for the next increment towards total surveillance of innocent citizens. The Treasury Department apparently believes that those mean ol' terrorists relied on "money laundering" to help pay for their assault on America. (That's odd; I thought the regulations the feds already have in place were supposed to prevent "money laundering"... 'Course, in LaLaLand, D. C., nothing succeeds like failure.) With the utterance of that magical word, "terrorism," the TD demands that your friendly neighborhood bankerman examine more closely evidence that you are who you say you are. After all, you are guilty-until-proven-innocent in this country. Right? Right. And your friendly neighborhood bankerman is resisting this egregious intrusion into your constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy. Right? Right... According to a recent story by Chris Baker in The Washington Times, "Many banks say they have no problem subjecting customers to greater scrutiny..." Hardly surprising. After all, banks depend far more for their existence on the goodwill of their masters in Washington, D. C., than they do your goodwill. I mean, really. Who the heck are you? You're just the customer who hands over your money to the bank for, er, "safe" keeping. Right? Right. Indeed, some banks are beginning to ask for an ID to perform even "...simple transactions, such as making deposits and withdrawals." (And don't try to pass off your YMCA card as a valid ID. Must have a State-approved ID with your Social Security Number firmly set for all to see. Yeah, yeah. I know. My SS card says "For Social Security and Tax Purposes — Not For Identification" on it, too. So what? You really didn't think the modern police state was going to worry about legal or constitutional niceties, did you?) The "precautionary principle" reins supreme. Anyone who has visited an airport or other State-run enterprise has experienced this idiocy firsthand: forget probable cause or even common sense. We are all potential criminals or terrorists in the jaundiced eye of Big Daddy. This is America today, buddy. If you don't like it, leave. If you don't shut up, I have the power to kill you!!!!! Just because you're eighty years old and have been going to the same branch of the same bank for the last fifty years and know all the tellers by their first names, don't get the warped notion that you are exempt from proving who you are before you can gain access to your own money. Don't you dare ask, "How is forcing me to give you my ID or my thumb print going to stop terrorists or money laundering?" Screw you, buster. You're just the customer. Sandy Spring National Bank of Maryland president and chief executive, Hunter R. Hollar, said, "It presents a challenge to us. We want to be that friendly, hometown bank, but we also have an obligation now to ask our customers for their identification." Oh, yes. See the crocodile tears trickling down Mr. Hollar's cheeks. He is so sorry he must treat you like a criminal. But he has an "obligation" (created by whom? for what good reason? enforced how?) to "ask" for ID. (Any guesses as to whether you'll get your own money — and avoid arrest — if you refuse this friendly "request"?) Even though the WTC terrorists supposedly had (fake) SSN's and followed the rules by adhering to deposit and withdrawal limits, somehow, someway if banks now "verify" who you are, keep records of how they know that, and check your ID against the State's list of known or suspected bad-boys, we'll all be so much safer and freer than ever before. Mind you, this game of immoral peekaboo is not limited to banks, either. "The rules target banks, trust companies, credit unions, savings associations, securities brokers and dealers, mutual funds and futures merchants and brokers." No stone left unturned, eh? Treasury lawyer, David Aufhauser, assures all you nervous nellies out there that, "The goal is to ensure financial institutions absolutely believe the person they are doing business with is the person they represent themselves to be." (Ignore the PC-inspired bad grammar there but don't ignore the unconscious arrogance dripping from his words.) Ah! So you have no right to anonymity anymore for any reason when it comes to how you store and use your own money. Gotcha. Why, ol' W. C. Fields — who sprinkled his money in dozens of banks under false names — would find himself staring out between bars if he tried to pull such evil acts today. After all, it's the financial institutions that must be satisfied — not you, the customer — as you come to them, hat in hand, and humbly and meekly beg them to allow you to hand over your own money to them so they can keep an eagle eye on all you do financially and thus keep you honest and prevent you from straying into a live of crime and degradation, you f***ing traitor, you! But as I said, this is business-as-usual for many of these tools of the State. Just ask Shirley Norton of Bank of America: "We won't have trouble complying with the new rules because we already do." There you have it, my friends. The status quo. No new chains. No loss of freedom. It's already gone. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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