If you think it can happen to Donald Trump, but not to you — then you’re badly mistaken.
Similarly, if you think it can happen to Donald Trump, but not to someone like Nigel Farage, across the pond — you’re already mistaken.
Consider this story, from MSNBC, of all places:
“It’s the biggest financial scandal you’ve barely heard about in the U.S.: Two British bank executives have lost their jobs and others may follow in an uproar over politicized decisions to close customer accounts. This is a cautionary tale for Americans about what happens when good banks go woke.
“The mess engulfing Coutts & Co. started in late June when Nigel Farage said the exclusive private bank was closing his accounts. Mr. Farage is a prominent politician on the British right, having been the prime mover behind the 2016 Brexit referendum and expressing economically and socially conservative views before and since.”
Wow. Nigel Farage was a serious contender for British prime minister, at one time. Regardless, he played a historic role in mobilizing the majority of British people to leave the communistic, collectivistic European Union, a socialist entity disproportionately financed by the British (as Margaret Thatcher predicted would happen more than 3 decades ago).
Read on:
“Mr. Farage asserted he was being de-banked for political reasons, a claim the bank initially denied. Alison Rose, CEO of Coutts’ parent company NatWest, told a BBC journalist that Mr. Farage had fallen below Coutts’ hefty minimum-balance requirements.
“It turns out Mr. Farage was right. He obtained a copy of a 40-page record of the bank’s internal discussions about his accounts. Coutts staff concluded that continuing to bank Mr. Farage would create “significant reputational risks” for Coutts owing to his sometimes inflammatory opinions on issues such as race relations, Russia and climate policy. The dossier records employees conceding there were commercial grounds for keeping Mr. Farage’s accounts open otherwise.
“Banks are so heavily regulated that they can’t help but be mindful of politics in business decisions. NatWest is still 39% owned by British taxpayers following a bailout in 2008, and the left-wing Labour Party is widely expected to win an election next year. Nowhere in the dossier did Coutts employees openly consider that they might soon be regulated by politicians opposed to Mr. Farage, but it’s hard to imagine the thought didn’t cross someone’s mind.”
This brazen favoritism is too much even for the far left MSNBC reporter, who concludes:
“This danger will grow as politicians lean more heavily on banks to implement their policies. Would a bank maintain accounts for a critic of net-zero climate policies if the bank is under pressure from Washington to advance the climate agenda?
“Normal businesses can choose their customers, but it’s a long time since a bank was a normal business. The left in particular treats banks as utilities. The Farage affair exposes how dangerous this is, and not only in Britain.”
It started decades ago with bank regulation. If banks had stayed private, none of this could have happened. It escalated after the 2008 financial crisis, when governments went from regulating to partially owning the entire banking industry, thanks to earlier regulatory policies (regarding lending) that created the whole crisis in the first place.
It should come as little surprise that since governments now largely own all the banks, governments feel free to impose their will on people who keep their money in those banks. It should come as little surprise that since government now owns not just certain banks, but the entire banking industry, that people who disagree with the government — including you and I — have no place to run when the government kicks us out of their banks for having incorrect political, social or ideological views.
Castro, Stalin and Mao imposed censorship by armies and guns. Today’s American, British and other so-called democratic governments don’t need the armies and guns (although they would not hesitate to use them). All they need is to take away all your money. The government of Canada has already done that to people who opposed vax mandates, mask mandates and lockdowns, several years ago.
It’s time to stop calling where we live “the free world”. And it’s time to start figuring out how to get our freedom back.
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