Will They Close Your Bank Account?

Will They Close Your Bank Account?
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Jeffrey A. Tucker
Updated:
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Commentary

We’ve all wondered precisely how our elite masters will impose a central bank digital currency (CBDC) on us. There is vast public resistance to the whole scheme. Given that, there needs to be some creative way to get from here to there. We are now gaining a glimpse into how this will work.

The headline in The New York Times (always a bellwether) reads as follows: “Why Banks Are Suddenly Closing Down Customer Accounts.” And the teaser: “Surprised individuals and small-business owners can’t pay rent or make payroll, and no one ever explains what they did wrong.”

The rest you can predict. It’s a series of stories of regular people who got surprise notices from banks that their accounts are suddenly closed. Their credit cards and checking accounts no longer work. The balance is sent in the form of a check, and the depositor is suddenly thrust into a strange situation. He has to look around for a different bank, which raises the obvious question: Why are you having to move your account services?

This skepticism can make banks reluctant to take on new accounts without some due diligence. Oddly, the person facing this situation is never told precisely why this is happening. You call the bank to ask and get nowhere. You go in and see the manager. You ask why, but no one will tell you. The point is that the system kicked you out. No other information is available.

The depositor is left to speculate. Maybe it was that series of cash withdrawals to pay the cash-only lawn service. Maybe it was those charges on an international trip. Maybe it was how you used your debit card at a crypto company that ended up closing. You search your memory bank for something, anything, that you did that might be considered sketchy or wrong. But you don’t know for sure.

You don’t know for a reason. It’s the classic authoritarian tactic: Arbitrary impositions inspire randomized fear.

The NYT explains, with accuracy:

“​​These situations are what banks refer to as ‘exiting’ or ‘de-risking.’ This isn’t your standard boot for people who have bounced too many checks. Instead, a vast security apparatus has kicked into gear, starting with regulators in Washington and trickling down to bank security managers and branch staff eyeballing customers. The goal is to crack down on fraud, terrorism, money laundering, human trafficking, and other crimes.”

“In the process, banks are evicting what appear to be an increasing number of individuals, families, and small-business owners. Often, they don’t have the faintest idea why their banks turned against them. But there are almost always red flags — transactions that appear out of character, for example — that lead to the eviction. The algorithmically generated alerts are reviewed every day by human employees. Banks generally won’t say how often they are closing accounts this way, and they’re not tracking how often they get it wrong.”

From the depositor point of view, this whole thing is a nightmare. It means delayed mortgage payments, payrolls on hold, and instant financial catastrophe. This is the sort of thing that causes sleep loss for days or weeks. Just the prospect inspires hypercompliance. Indeed, this is likely the whole point of the headline article in the NYT: to scare the heck out of you.

People will do almost anything to prevent this eventuality. How about banks taking a page out of the book for TSA compliance? Maybe there needs to be a kind of “pre-check” for depositors. Maybe some retina scanning is necessary for ATMs. Maybe government can guarantee that your account will not be closed by providing special enlistment for such programs under the guise of keeping your account secure, preventing fraud, and otherwise making sure that your life can continue on as normal.

This is the beginning of the social credit system, which is already in place for airline travel. It is already in place in other ways too, such as at the UPS or FedEx store that will not send your packages without a scan of a government ID. Also right now, government is now rolling out the “enhanced ID” or “real ID” such that you can’t even travel domestically next year without it. Everyone in every state must march to the DMV and trade their old license for a new one.

This much is guaranteed: The same system is coming to banking. When it happens, it will be the first major step toward a new system of clearing management on a proprietary blockchain. Cash withdrawals will be tightened to the point of severe limitation. The goal is to make sure that not even one transaction can take place without the ability to track, trace, and isolate. From there, it is a small step to the CBDC, which will be implemented in the name of safety, security, and bank stability.

People say they will resist this, but they will not. Absolutely no one can handle having an account suddenly closed. They are doing this now, and the NYT is advertising this, as a terror tactic to make sure that everyone complies, and observes the consequences of noncompliance.

This major piece in the NYT is just the beginning. You will see many more such articles and ever more cases of account closures. It will happen to major conservative influencers, Hollywood stars who speak up against the regime, and politicians who dare to promote ideas that the ruling class considers dangerous. There is no need for prosecutions or crude forms of coercion when you can control everyone through the threat of financial cancellation.

What is the workaround? It’s hard to say. Maybe it is keeping bags of silver dimes and perhaps physical gold. Maybe bitcoin and other cryptos on your wallet can work to make an end run around conventional money and banking. Maybe bartering will make a broader return. But even here, the reporting requirements are going to intensify, such that failing to disclose such transactions could subject you to criminal penalties.

It’s all coming, my friends.

What I find truly remarkable about this is that absolutely no one among regular human beings truly wants this. I had a fun discussion with an employee of the CLEAR system at the airport this weekend. The machine scanned my eyes and instantly produced my face and ID.

I asked her if she finds this creepy and even immoral. She said absolutely. Even though she works for the system, she truly hates it.

Indeed, it is true that everyone hates the surveillance, the mandates, the tracking and tracing, the biofascist measures, the technologies, the centralization, and the relentless building of the dystopian future. It is being imposed upon an unwilling public. It’s the 1 percent ruling class versus everyone else.

The problem is figuring out how to stop it and escape this grim fate.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Jeffrey A. Tucker
Jeffrey A. Tucker
Author
Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press, as well as 10 books in five languages, most recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of “The Best of Ludwig von Mises.” He writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on the topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.
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