Debanking — when a bank decides they do not want you as a customer — has become a hot topic amid a flurry of accusations from people and companies who say they were kicked out of their banks over their politics.
The apparent targets of debanking tend to be prominent people on the Right and cryptocurrency companies, which tend to lean right and are under scrutiny from regulators. Former First Lady Melania Trump said in her recently published memoir that both she and her son Barron were refused bank accounts after January 6.
“I was shocked and dismayed to learn that my long-time bank decided to terminate my account and deny my son the opportunity to open a new one,” Trump wrote.
She blamed the “venom of cancel culture” and said she had “serious concerns about civil rights violations.”
Last month, conservative author Dinesh D’Souza claimed he was kicked out of Chase Bank without explanation.
“Walked in one day to discover they had closed my account,” D’Souza posted on X. “The local branch couldn’t understand it since I was a good and known customer. They said the order came from the top with no explanation given or even available!”
When a person or company is debanked, they are blocked from having a bank account at one or multiple banks, often with little explanation. Sometimes they are blocked from other financial services, such as making credit card transactions or using payroll platforms. If they cannot find another bank, they may be forced to rely on alternatives, like check cashing services with high fees and interest.
Critics note that debanking resembles Big Tech’s censorship at the behest of the government during recent presidential elections.
Marc Andreessen, the tech billionaire founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which invests in dozens of crypto companies, spoke in depth about debanking last month on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Andreessen said the Biden administration has used debanking to target its political opponents and crypto company founders.
https://x.com/BTC_Archive/status/1861854554049909082?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1861854554049909082%7Ctwgr%5E7ed0b1b19c2e6985394847308bf24dbb7bd2593c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailywire.com%2Fnews%2Fwhat-is-debanking-and-why-are-people-talking-about-it
“We’ve had like 30 founders debanked in the last four years,” he told Rogan. “It’s been a big recurring pattern. This is one of the reasons why we ended up supporting Trump. We just can’t live in this world. We can’t live in a world where somebody starts a company that’s a completely legal thing and then they literally get sanctioned and embargoed by the United States government.”
The Biden administration’s targeting is an expansion of the Obama administration’s debanking of certain legal businesses, including gambling, marijuana, prostitution, and gun shops, under a program called Operation Choke Point, Andreessen said.
Earlier this month, Trump appointed venture capitalist David Sacks the White House AI and Crypto Czar. Sacks previously criticized PayPal, where he was product manager, for its 2017 ban on what it deemed right-wing extremists.
Conservatives have expressed other concerns about banks allegedly targeting them as well.
Although not debanking exactly, after the January 6 Capitol riot, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network instructed banks to comb through customer transactions for “suspicious charges,” which included words like “MAGA” and “Trump” as well as guns and religious texts.
Under a new Trump administration, conservatives hope regulators will be more reluctant to target them through the banking system, and they may be in luck.
Trump promised at a rally this year that once elected he will “place strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to debank you from your political beliefs.”
Read much more at:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/what-is-debanking-and-why-are-people-talking-about-it?topStoryPosition=2
Another tactic banks use is constant screw up of your accounts. My ex wife bought ten acres with a house in Alabama with a mortgage finance company and was told and placed in the contract the mortgage would not be sold and they were to keep it inhouse. Well, six months after we signed the loan they sold it to Wells Fargo and our troubles began. WF jacked our interest rate by 8 percent and demand we furnish house insurance, we had that to get the mortgage! I had to have the president of the regional insurance company contact WF and explain we had insurance, they still jacked our escrow account and demanded we pay more into it to cover their insurance. WF contacted our bank, a local bank and transferred our checking and savings and money market account to WF, yeah, time to bring out the lawyers. We sued WF and sued the mortgage finance company for breach of contract and malfeasance and fraud. Took two years of litigation and we won, WF and the mortgage company had to reimburse all lawyer fees, and they both had to pay the mortgage amount in full and we received punitive damages.
ReplyDelete(My ex wife AND me bought ten acres...) I should have proofed read before hitting publish.
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