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Political Factoid
Banking in America
An abbreviated history*
- Jesse James was a threat
but that was a long time ago
and since then:
- Banks stopped paying attention to signatures on checks.
- Banks transferred responsibility to customers for proving forgery.
- Banks started charging for printing personalized checks.
- Banks started requiring full name and address pre-printed on checks.
(assists identity thieves)
- Banks stopped returning cancelled check originals.**
- Banks stopped returning full size photo copies of cancelled checks.**
- Banks stopped returning photo copies of both sides of cancelled checks.**
- Banks stopped returning any copy of checks.**
(or other information showing to whom they gave your money)
- Banks stopped allowing you to sue them in court for their misconduct.
- ... and somewhere along the way many banks started charging:
- Fees for account inactivity
- Fees for low balance
- Fees for excessive number of withdrawals
- Fees for talking to a person
- Fees for the privilege of having the account
- Fees for accepting checks from other banks
- Fees for cashing the check if the payee is not a customer of the same bank.
- Banks destroy all of your past financial records in the blink of eye
if you don't continue to pay their fees.
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The sequence of events varied slightly from bank to bank.
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Some banks continued service, for a while, if you
paid an extra ransom fee each month.
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