The Banking Industry Treats Its Customers Worse Than United Airlines

Tuesday, April 18, 2017
By Paul Martin

by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
ZeroHedge.com
Apr 17, 2017

Last week the Internet was ablaze with disgust after a man was physically dragged off a United Airlines flight.

What’s amazing, though, is that there are countless cases of another industry abusing its customers in far, far worse ways than the airlines.

I’m talking, of course, about the banking industry.

1. Banks treat you like criminal suspects too.

Sure, United had a man dragged away like he was a rape suspect being hauled off to jail.

But banks treat their customers like criminal suspects on a daily basis.

If you think I’m exaggerating, try walking into your bank and asking to withdraw $20,000 in cash.

See how quickly they start acting like police investigators, demanding to know what you intend to do with your own savings.

Thanks to a law called the Bank Secrecy Act, banks are legally required to fill out “Suspicious Activity Reports” on their customers and send them to the government.

Banks filed nearly 1 million suspicious activity reports in 2016 alone.

Think about that; United treated one passenger like a criminal suspect. Banks treated 1 million customers like criminal suspects last year.

2. Banks nickel and dime you even more.

The airline industry is constantly being ridiculed for its incessant and ridiculous fees. Selecting a seat, checking a bag, booking over the phone, even ‘payment fees’.

My favorite is the ‘fuel surcharge,’ which most airlines imposed back in 2007-2008 to compensate for the high price of fuel after oil prices surged past $120.

Of course, when oil fell to below $30, they didn’t get rid of the fuel surcharge.

Airlines rake in tens of billions of dollars each year on these fees that absolutely infuriate their passengers.

But once again, banks are no different, endlessly nickeling and diming their customers with unnecessary fees… especially if you’re a small business owner.

Some of the most infuriating are fees for sending and receiving money.

To send a domestic wire transfer, for example, banks charge a fee of $25 to $35.

Yet the actual -cost- of banks sending each other money through the Federal Reserve system is just pennies– as low as 3 cents per transaction.

So banks are literally charging more than ONE THOUSAND TIMES as much for a wire transfer as it costs them.

3. Overbooking? Try fractional reserve banking

Last week’s United incident highlighted the common practice of overbooking, in which airlines deliberately sell more seats for a flight than actually exist.

If there are 150 seats on a plane, an airline might sell 160-165 seats on the assumption that 5% of ticketed passengers won’t show up.

In other words, they make money by selling something that doesn’t actually exist… which isn’t a problem until all the passengers show up.

Well, this happens in the banking industry as well; banks routinely make loans and charge interest on money that doesn’t actually exist.

It’s called “Fractional Reserve Banking”, a type of financial system that only requires banks to hold a tiny portion (or none) of their customers’ deposits in reserve.

If you deposit $100,000 at a bank, for example, the bank might hold 5% of that money in reserve, and loan out the remaining $95,000.

That $95,000 will eventually be deposited in the bank, upon which the bank will hold 5% of that amount ($4,750) and loan out the remaining $90,250.

This continues again and again until the bank has made $2 million in loans on a single $100,000 deposit.

The other $1.9 million doesn’t actually exist. But the bank is raking in the interest.

Just like airline overbooking, fractional reserve banking is a risky practice. And we saw in 2008 how quickly the entire system unraveled.

But that’s OK because. . .

4. Banks are in bed with the government too.

The Rest…HERE

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