I caused a scene at the credit union last week.
I use a neighborhood credit union that is old-fashioned and still offers personalized service. I’ve had an account there since I was five. I’ve always liked doing business with those folks. However, the tellers and managers seem to come-and-go more often these days, which means I no longer have the same solid, long-term relationships with people at the bank.
I exhibited abominable behavior last week when I walked into the bank with $5,400 in cash and asked to deposit it in one of my money market accounts. The teller was one of those newer gals, and I don’t have a relationship with her. My bud, the Lead Teller, has moved to one of the credit union’s other branches, so I deal with the new people each time I go in. The cash was mostly in 20s and 10s. I dropped the wad of cash through the teller window. She immediately glared at me, sizing me up through the narrow slits in her eyes. She kept commenting on the excessive number of small bills. I shrugged and said, “Sorry to burden you with the deposit from heck.”
She neatly arranged the wad of cash and walked to the back of the counter to put it through the bank bill counter. Then she called a manager over – I don’t know him either – and they whispered for a bit, then he started to put the bills through the machine. She came back to the window and started to ask me questions about the money. She wanted to know why I walked in with cash. She tried to appear as if she was jokingly asking, “Where did this come from?” She asked if I just sold something. I said, “No.” She asked if “it had just been laying around.” I said, “Not really.” Then she made a remark about “all of those small bills.” I shrugged. By that time, she was irked. I was under no obligation to answer her nosy questions, and she knew that I knew that was the case.
She essentially acted smug during the whole transaction, which took about twenty minutes. Of course I left pissed off about the whole experience. I understand why it happened, of course, but that’s why I get more irritated than most people. Consider this 2005 article on Wired:
Pressured by anti-terror laws, banks will be spending billions of dollars over the next few years on software to counter money laundering. The software will automatically track suspicious financial transactions, but it will also monitor millions of innocuous ones, and may make it harder to cheat on your taxes.
Thanks to the stringent requirements of the Patriot Act, enacted after 9/11 to choke the supply of terror funds, and the unambiguous threats of steep fines and even imprisonment of bank directors if their organizations facilitate money laundering, U.S. financial institutions are very enthusiastic about installing anti-money-laundering software.
The post-9/11 war on banking privacy was not for the purpose of “choking off the supply of terror funds” – that was only the story to sell the scheme. Create a crisis – terrorists laundering money – and the government steps in to make a power grab and zap another essential element of freedom: privacy of voluntary transactions between you and your banker.
I used to work at a broker-dealer in finance/accounting, and we had an aggressive AML (Anti-Money Laundering) department. All employees were forced to view these silly propaganda presentations each year, and they included taking quizzes on the presentation material (money laundering propaganda) until you “passed” the various quizzes. If you didn’t finish the quizzes in a timely manner, you got emails from the AML group warning you that you would be “reported” to your boss. I got reported a lot. I have a good friend who has had similar experiences in his professional career, and he can tell a better story on AML than I can.
The state has destroyed financial privacy through its “war” on private, voluntary transactions between banks and customers. Banking totalitarianism has left financial service employees brainwashed, suspicious, and unable to engage their long-time customers in an honest business relationship. It’s pretty much an attitude of guilty until proven not guilty that guides bank employees in their day-to-day dealings with their customers.
A few years back my bank started holding the personal checks I would cash, usually for four days. Four days then became five days, and in 2009 the new rule was a 5 – 10 day hold. Not that it matters that my deposits show up in my balances as “available” or “unavailable,” but it’s the attitude that leaves me fuming each time I am subjected to a teller loudly voicing that “the monies will be held for 5-10 days…..” The Lead Teller used to waive the hold because of my money market balances. With her being gone, the holds are no longer waived.
All of this nonsense serves to break down the relationship between you and your bank or credit union. It makes the customer angry, and no one gets any benefit from it except the totalitarian overlords in government whose goal is to control you and break down your resistance to their invasion of your day-to-day life functions.
