I don’t know how many times I’ve heard something along the lines of the following from traditional bankers, slightly innovative money managers, and even some of the staff of cutting edge bitcoin exchanges alike: “We can take clients from everywhere in the world except for Iran, North Korea, and of course the United States. Those are the three we refuse to make any exception for.”
The three rogue nations. The nations that don’t get along with other nations – two of which were put on the list of rogue nations involuntarily, their inhabitants involuntarily cut off from the international banking community – Iran and North Korea. It was a punishment levied by the third. It was part of the “or else” option in the ultimatum “Comply with the US State Department or else.” And “or else” means all kinds of horrible things when an individual in one of those counties wants to engage in trade with the outside world, or at least hopes to live in a place that is able to trade with the outside world.
The despots of North Korea or Iran would never themselves wish such treatment on their people. Some astute observers have pointed out that even in totalitarian states, this oppressive alienation from the rest of the world further bonds the local population to its government in allegiance, and against the economy-attacking-devilish-outside-force that has cast the people of those countries into such an economic black hole. That population is prevented from enjoying vital freedoms enjoyed by much of the rest of the world – made into pariahs by the world super power.
While the first two populations were added to the list involuntarily, the third country’s government placed its people on the list voluntarily. That is the United States. The United States government made its people into pariahs. The United States government has, in all sorts of ways, removed its citizens from participation in the world financial markets and that action has generated almost no domestic outrage.
If you are an American reading this you have been made into a pariah in this world by your government. Your money is no good at financial institutions all around the world. You money is no good at many world class institutions if you show up with your American passport. Some of the top tier banks in the world consider you unbankable and want nothing to do with you. You have to launder your money if you want your money sitting in some of the finest financial institutions. That is because your government has worked hard to ensure that an American is considered as nightmarish to have as a customer as an Iranian or North Korean. That doesn’t make sense that the citizens of such a prosperous land as the United States are as poorly regarded as those two backwards nations.
Through many onerous regulations dealing with banking, money, and finance, the powerful United States government has made it too expensive and too much of a hassle to provide the entire array of financial services to Americans. Out of all the ways that the great American empire can use its influence, goodwill, and power in the world, this is what it does – it financially isolates its inhabitants, the very people who are said to empower the United States government through democratic elections.
It is truly an embarrassment to this American writer, that his home country, once the unquestionable freest in the world, makes a list alongside communist North Korea and theocratic Iran. This detail many Americans do not realize or care about. But it is quite significant that our American business interests are strangled abroad. The big guys with lawyers figure out a way around the regulation. The small and medium sized guys don’t even bother, or find illegal channels, before they finally get pushed out of business by criminal elements, inconvenience, or government. The United States, where even an honest man cannot conduct honest business in a host of industries because unelected regulators and bureaucrats have so terrified financial institutions that only a fool would cooperate with an American economically. That is the age we live in.
Sure there are the brave few Bitcoin companies who will do it – welcome Americans despite all the risk, paperwork, and cost involved. There are occasionally even a few banks who will do it.
Some claim that America is “a free market” or “capitalist.” It is a far cry from that. In fact, nearly the opposite of a free market, it almost appears that screwy international statist ideologies have chased out all sense from this once free system, a system now so skewed that our passports have become not advantageous or neutral, but actually undesirable for so many areas of international business.
And it doesn’t stop abroad. New York State, with its horrible Bit License has done the bidding of the big banks. It has turned its state – and its economic development engine: New York City – once home to one of the most vibrant hubs for cryptocurrency technology worldwide, into a virtual desert, where having a New York State ID is enough to not be able to be a full fledged, freely functioning member of the financial system. Companies who have not obtained the very difficult to obtain Bit License may not do business with New York residents. New York residents are turned into second class citizens by the Bit License when trying to conduct business in their own homeland. This does not stop many of those second class citizens from looking at these and other toxic regulation and relishing them as some type of cherished pro-consumer measure when their effect is the very opposite. Only those who do not know what they are talking about could ever honestly call such measures pro-consumer.
How effectively that line of reasoning describes the way the US government has made its people into pariahs in the world. And so many of the people cheer for more of that same toxic regulation. Welcome to one of the unbankable nations of the world, where it’s almost a joke to call ourselves “the land of the free and home of the brave.” Yet we do. And day-by-day so many of us, so happily empower those who make us less free. Welcome to the United States of America circa 2017.
