And again, if you actually read the entire BBC article you'd see it was a misguided anti-fraud effort that wasn't in accordance with actual bank policy. Interestingly there's some reports here that some brokers won't do an outgoing wire without you telling them the reason, have done so for years. Not sure why that wasn't an indicator of "capital controls by desperate governments" and this is?
Yes, just yesterday I had to help a friend to withdraw from his TD Ameritrade account. TD Ameritrade wants to know the reason, they ask for filling out a formular for this. They say the Patriot Act (aka US Nazi laws) would demand it...
I think almost every case of withdrawals made difficult can be traced back to know your customer/AML requirements and clumsy implementations of them by the financial institution's compliance departments or employees who are either scared of running afoul of the rules so they go overboard or just aren't competent. A lot of it goes back before the Patriot Act to efforts to stop drug and organized crime money laundering. I'm no fan of the Patriot Act, but even if you eliminated it most of these requirements would still exist for those reasons. Regardless, although it may be a government attempt to reduce civil liberties (i.e. Patriot Act), it has nothing to do with a conspiracy to eliminate cash.
That's your subservient & subordinate opinion, mine is different. It's my money, they need to know nothing about for what I need my own money... It has to do with privacy.
Never said they did. In fact I'm pretty sure I said I was no fan of the Patriot Act and made no statement, subservant, subservient, or otherwise that the gubmn't should need to know for what you need your own money. Just to be clear, my point was that AML/Patriot Act laws and their poor implementations have been around long before zero interest and it's a stretch to tie them to some conspiracy to eliminate cash in response to current zero interest rates (that's what this thread is about, by the way).
Look at it this way... If it's your own money, why do you wanna lend it to a commercial bank by depositing it in your account? As soon as you've done that, everything that you do is subject to the terms and conditions that define your relationship with the bank. That relationship will change with regulatory developments. If you're unhappy with it, you're more than welcome to take all your money and stuff it under your mattress.