America’s financial system has taken a beating, all of the top brokerage firms and banks went bust or were partially nationalized in a panic that caused US banks to be rated below Namibia.
For an ordinary retail bank customer from another country, I have always found US banks surprisingly primitive. Could that really have anything to say about an endemic problem from over the counter to prime brokerage like Goldman Sachs? Why is the service at American retail banks so bad when the service at American retail outlets is so good? Why can’t a bank work like PayPal? And most of all, why is this the case in the global epicenter of capitalism?
I’ve been in America ten years now, and still use my UK retail bank because it allows me to do things by phone, that my American bank down the street won’t allow in person (such as transferring money without endless forms and pieces of paper).
There is almost nothing in europe that requires the arcane process of writing a paper check and mailing it. When I found out that my online automatic bill payment system actually resulted in a paper check being printed out placed in an envelope and mailed, I nearly fell off my chair. This is technological equivalent of finding out that there are little people inside the TV.
After moving from San Francisco to New York, I kept my Wells Fargo account, then found out that there were no branches in NY and no reciprocal agreements, no way of arranging a wire transfer without a weeks delay in sending bits of paper back and forth, no free interbank exchange and ATM withdrawals charged more than the money I made in Interest, for an entire year.
American banks do not allow credit ratings to be imported, so you have to build a new score when you move from abroad. Unfortunately, if you pay your bills on time and don’t borrow money you cannot get a credit score. In order to do so you have to borrow money. In other words to get a credit score you have to get into debt. I have a credit card that is linked to my cellphone bill and is used for nothing else. The sole purpose is to enable my credit score. This is farcical.
Today, a friend tried to transfer money to our US account from Europe only to be told that the US bank had been blacklisted. Although I find it hard to believe that this is true, my level of credulity is changing.
I could go on, but the point is that the anecdotal experiences mean that something is rotten. But we all know that now.