Well, if you're the most libertarian person you know, you don't know very many libertarians. Don't worry, though. Fiat currency is collapsing the world over. Soon, nobody will want your cash. It won't be worth whacking you over the head to get.
It reminds me of that story in wiemer republic where someone had a wheelbarrow full of money to go buy bread. He went inside the store and someone dumped the money on the ground and ran off with the wheelbarrow.
In Canada, unless a person is a criminal or presents false IDs, it is against the LAW to deny a savings account. I used to work in the bank, and believe me, I wish I could deny some of these clients (or crack heads). This is a generic trend (I emphasis generic). People with bad credits (due to written off loans, unpaid collections etc) tend to be very careless. A lot of them basically don't care about their credits and how they manage their money. Result? It can cost the bank more money/human power to go after these people for NFSs, fradulent pre-authorized payments and account package fees. Sometimes it is just NOT worth the time to provide service to these people. Again, there are exceptions. Some people with bad credit can maintain their account on good terms. The difference is THEY KNOW WHY THEY HAVE BAD CREDITS. And they want to recover from their previous mistakes.
And how are the anti-money laundering laws in Canada? They've been screwing around with anti-money laundering laws and making it tougher to open accounts of ANY kind in the United States. If this was a new customer for the bank, it's entirely possible that the bank refused him because they couldn't verify the source of the money he would be putting in there. Credit plays into that in some way, btw. If this guy opened an account and laundered, say, drug money through it, then BANK is on the hook for that with the Feds. So, if the bank CAN'T refuse anyone for an account and it's also OBLIGATED to refuse money launderers, what you get is a clusterfuck.
There is tight money laundering law here. But really.. the law can only prevent the "small crimes". The real money launders are WAY smarter than that. This is the same with compliance on selling mutual funds. They keep creating pointless and time-consuming procedures to make sure the salesmen are compliant to MFDA. And yet SEC don't regulate enough on highly volatile derivative traders (ie. the notorious Goldman Sach)???? They committed financial crimes by causing investors billions of dollars. What we saw in 2008-2009 was one of the largest schemes of transfer of wealth. Does this make any sense?
"What would you like to see in Financial/ Government Reform?" remove as many barriers to entry as possible, remove bullshit imposed due to patriot act and similar crap, remove nonsense rules and regulations specially ones that have given big corporations their monopoly or duopoly status, remove high fees imposed on some permits, remove bull crap bureaucracy, remove the useless paper work that makes it so fucking time consuming to get a simple business permit, put system in place that allows citizens to rate and review performance of government employees and put measures that makes sure government employee assholes are fired on the spot, stop supporting unions, remove laws that support those losers but none, I mean none of the above is going to happen, quite the opposite this country is fucked in the ass, looking at the current trend, everything is going to get worse, mainly in regards to the problems stated above, and those problems will lead to even more economic problems ... capitalism my ass
Makes perfect sense. First of all, I have a lot of issues with the cozy relationship the Too Big to Fail banks have with the regulator (but, I also understand that regulatory capture is an unavoidable part of regulation. People like to pretend it doesn't exist but pretending doesn't make it reality). So, I have no idea what derivatives traders you're talking about because there are tons of different types of derivatives. You're going to have to be more specific. The biggest wealth transfer scam I've ever seen is government transferring wealth to the political class. The Goldmans of the world are always the facilitators in those things. No surprise. You hit the nail on the head about anti-money laundering regulation. The big guys get around it a million different ways. BUT, financial firms have to prove to regulators that they A.) have procedures in place and B.) strictly follow those procedures. So, if you have some kind of blemish on your record, you're tossed out. Usually, you're not even a money launderer - you've merely used an alias because you didn't like your given name but you never took the time to change it legally and now with the Patriot Act (or needlessly harass the citizens act as I call it), your name doesn't match your SS number. Over-regulation drives competition out of business and all that's left are the Goldman Sachs and they are free to do whatever they want to everyone else. Strong government makes industry stronger, not the citizenry. Yet, the citizenry here keeps begging for stronger regulation and then bitching about the inevitable outcome.
The last time we had capitalism here was sometime before Hoover and certainly at no time after FDR. And...I agree with you. Regulation simply raises barriers to entry and reduces competition. We've had almost 100 years of the SEC and we're bitching about the same things now that they were back in the 1930's - but we're paying a huge amount of money to sustain the regulatory behemoth. The cost way outstrips any benefit.
government is like bacteria, we need some bacteria (for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactobacillus_acidophilus) but more than the required amount can fuck us up and too much of it and some types of bacteria can even kill us just like we need to see a doctor as soon as we find symptoms of harmful bacteria in our body, to have him give us medication to eliminate it, we need to have a system in place to make sure fucked up government employees get eliminated from the government as soon as citizens report their unhappiness with the fucking employee added: but it's already too late (this statement is in regards to almost all the governments of the world), the shit has grown beyond the point where proper monitoring systems can be put in place, and it continues to grow because it is the only sector that is creating jobs right now
Here's what I'd like to see. If any institution/company/organization is "too big to fail" and demands government aid, then that aid should be directed to splitting the receiver up. If we are going to bail out banks/wall street/automakers/bait shops then we should be making damn sure we don't have to bail them out again (ever) while demonstrating to everybody else that you will not be saved from your screw ups.