Notes From The Field By Simon Black

October 10, 2019  San Juan, Puerto Rico

Why You Shouldn’t Be Able To Drive To Your Bank

What is your favorite coffee shop or restaurant? Which doctor’s office and dentist do you prefer to go to?

I bet these are all within, say, 15 minutes away of your home. That makes sense--who wants to drive three hours to get coffee, or take a plane to their dentist?

But what about your bank?

If you live in the USA or Europe, chances are, the banks in your neighborhood probably aren’t that great.

Europe in particular has a lot of problems; according to the European Banking Authority (one of the EU’s biggest financial regulators), the largest banks in Europe collectively lack more than 100 billion euros to meet minimum capital requirements.

And in some countries (like Italy) the banking system is already teetering on the edge of insolvency.

Banks in the US have their own challenges-- like constantly abusing their customers’ trust.

Wells Fargo is the poster child for these types of scandals. They sold customers car insurance they didn’t need, and charged erroneous fees which got 20,000 cars repossessed.

A computer glitch once caused over 500 Wells Fargo customers have their houses foreclosed on.

Wells Fargo illegally repossessed vehicles of soldiers who were deployed overseas, and accidentally charged late fees to more than 100,000 customers when it was the bank that was at fault.

Wells Fargo employees also infamously created fake customer accounts in order to hit their sales goals. Other employees were caught selling customers’ social security numbers.

This sort of thievery is sadly commonplace.

Yet for all these risks-- all the abuse, the shaky financials, etc., banks pay almost nothing to depositors. You’re lucky to earn half a percent these days, and most checking accounts pay literally zero.

There are additional issues to consider as well—

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/why-you-shouldnt-be-able-to-drive-to-your-bank-25768/