I'm once again astonished with how much control of our businesses is simply out of our hands.
When looking at practices these financial institutions use it makes me wonder what can't they do?
Everyone cites "regulations", but as far as I understand, they make the regulations. Directly or indirectly.
Take for example the known cases where PayPal freezes accounts holding people's money. If I take someone else's money and refuse to give it back to them, it's a crime in pretty much every nation. But when banks and financial institutions do that, they get away scot-free (with maybe some small rants from the internet) and keep doing this systematically profiting in almost all cases.
If we're not bound to middle men like Stripe and PayPal, we're bound to Visa and Mastercard. Is there any way out of this madness?
Essentially, it goes way further than what these financial institutions can do. It goes directly to what the U.S. fed can do - the clearing house for the USD. It can cut off any bank for misconduct/doing business with e.g. Cuba etc.
Also, the UN bank can threaten to kick out your central/federal bank too.
Also an interesting example of bank politics is that Khadaffi made several laws in Libya against UN bank rules, for example providing loans with infinite term and zero interest for newlyweds. During the civil war, one of the first things the rebels did was create a central bank in Misrata, pledge loyalty to UN and then redquest to be recognized as the true Libyan Government.
> the UN bank can threaten to kick out your central/federal bank too
This does not exist. Central banks interface with each other. The closest thing to what you're describing is the European Central Bank.
> pledge loyalty to UN
This is gibberish. One can be recognised by the United Nations (UN). One can also, by accepting its Charter and paying one's fees, become a UN Member. But there is no pledging of fielty involved.
None of these is referred to as "a UN Bank". Only the World Bank is a part of the United Nations system. It makes loans to developing countries. The only way being "kicked out" of the World Bank makes sense would be if it refused to lend to you (which it does often and usually with minimum consequence). Note that the World Bank System lends to many non-UN member entities, e.g. private businesses and non-profits. China got pissed off at the World Bank and IMF last year and effectively kicked itself out by starting a competitor in its "New Development Bank".
The Bank for International Settlements is a discussion forum whose recommendations are not binding. The United States, for instance, added its own touch to Basel III, Switzerland layered on a "Swiss finish" and China, India and many others simply ignored it. Being "kicked out" of the BIS would simply mean you don't get to go to its meetings. Many countries do fine without being BIS members. The Financial Stability Board is an even smaller group with even less tangible activity than the BIS. (It published a book report on rules it thought sovereign wealth funds should follow. Compliance is voluntary and one need not be a member to read or implement, or as more countries have done, ignore, the report's suggestions.)
The closest international financial systems one can be "kicked out" of with consequence are the electronic-dollar transmission system operated by the New York Federal Reserve [1] (you can still use printed dollars if America "kicks you out") and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) [2]. SWIFT is not a club for only central banks–many private banks are SWIFT members, too, and many get "kicked out" for doing varieties of stupid things. They can still move their money around by asking other banks to do it for them.
The international financial Illuminati you think exists does not.
I don't know what you think happens when paypal/bank/etc freezes an accounts but they don't get to keep the money, normally it gets refunded to the source of income (i.e customer refund), transferred to the government (i.e. income from criminal proceedings) or returned to account holder after a period of time (ensuring there's no clawbacks) .
If I'm a bank with billions of dollars worth of money from third parties, can't I use a big portion of that money to profit? Moving money around, gaming the currencies, stocks, etc.
Maybe I'm too naive at this, but in my mind, they have to keep some money ready for people to pick up, but the rest of it, they use it for whatever they want. If I go to my bank and ask to take a large sum of cash, they won't give it to me right away.
They profit when money is not at your hands, therefore even if people do get their money back some day, they would have already profited from it.
I'm quite intrigued by this topic, but never got around to really dive into it, so please... if you can educate me on how this is not profitable for financial institutions, I'd be glad to read it!
Yes, they do provide a good service. But they're still a "duopoly" (is that a thing?) as far as I know.
Can't even think on who's the third most used credit card provider.
As always with lack of competition all of these institutions are free to do as they wish. Specially since they deal with money, that can be (and often is) used for lobbying.
But I'm a pessimist, and these are just my 2 cents
Maybe it's all in my head and people are not influenced by money, democracy is a real thing and big companies obey all laws.
As you don't know whether Discover or Amex is bigger? Why does that matter? And Paypal is not a credit card. You can link it directly to your bank account and pay with it as the transaction processor. That's a big part of why it's so popular. Might as well complain about bitcoins.
The point is that referring to Visa and MC as a duopoly is inaccurate. There are other ways to process payments besides through the credit card system.
OK but for the most part when Paypal or others close down your account and/or freeze funds, you /have/ done something illegal. You may not care about billions of dollars of movies, games and tv shows being pirated, but the people who pay for them to be produced do, so the banks and others protect their rights. As far as kickstarter and so on, this is to prevent your customers from being ripped off, which has happened where KS project never delivers the project and so on.
For sure banks and paypal have overstepped but I wouldn't call it "madness". If you want to sell filesharing accounts try bitcoin, I hear it works very well
When looking at practices these financial institutions use it makes me wonder what can't they do?
Everyone cites "regulations", but as far as I understand, they make the regulations. Directly or indirectly.
Take for example the known cases where PayPal freezes accounts holding people's money. If I take someone else's money and refuse to give it back to them, it's a crime in pretty much every nation. But when banks and financial institutions do that, they get away scot-free (with maybe some small rants from the internet) and keep doing this systematically profiting in almost all cases.
If we're not bound to middle men like Stripe and PayPal, we're bound to Visa and Mastercard. Is there any way out of this madness?