PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Occupy...

Concerning our banking system in general-
I've been told by banking institutions that I cannot have large amouts of cash and make transactions using that cash. I am required to account for the cash when I make a transaction. I literally had a bank manager throw a fit when I tried to deposit 20k cash into an account. He told me I can not make transactions of that amount using cash without accounting for it.
So I am *required* to let banking/investment institutions hold my money. They then make money on it (or lose it at their free will if investing) and charge me fees when I want to use it.
Sounds like a monopoly of our currency to me.

For the record, the money had been withdrawn from various investment accounts (which in itself involved various fees and penalties paid to the institutions) to avoid further loss. And I 'can not' have my own money?? I *have* to have it in an account somewhere? And pay them whatever fees they want to charge .. AND bail them out when they mismanage it. Something is wrong with this picture.

The money is 'safe' in the system now and I'm not all that happy about it. I feel forced to let them make money on my money and charge me to do so. Please explain what I am missing.

You can thank the DEA for the "accountability." The rest is just banking business as usual. For the record, under those same DEA rules you can move amounts of less than $10K without issue. If the bank gives you any guff about that, they're out of line.

Yeah, I know, I ended up moving it to varous accounts in lower amounts (It killed that manager to watch me walk out with the cash).
But hey, at leat I'm contributing to their multi-billion profits this last quarter, so I have that going for me!
And earning almost enough in interest to account for the devaluation of the currency ..

This is not the bank, it's the IRS and it's been on the books for at least 25 years. I could say where have you been but I won't. Much.

It mainly for money laundering by drug dealers and anybody else who does illegal activities for cash. Any cash amount over 10K has to be reported on IRS Form 8300 or the bank is in deep crap. This is not just banks, it's any business who accepts cash payments in one lump sum over 10K. Including you as a home builder/remodeling guy which is why I'm surprised you don't know about it. Someone pays you that much in cash and it's not disclosed you could go to jail. The IRS insists on detailed records so the money can be traced in an audit. I used to manage a new car dealership in the mid 80's and this came up all the time. Some super sharp mob guy comes in with 75 grand in a money clip and wants a new Bimmer. Nope. Those guys had to switch to shady wholesalers who work the auctions and the cash can be more easily hidden but even then the auction is a business and subject to the same rules.

Here's the form and as you can see, it's very detailed.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8300.pdf

Bob

I didn't say I didn't know, just that I thinks it's wrong. The side effect of requiring me to have my money in an instituion allows them a monopoly on the currency and related services. Wasn't that way previously and they managed to make money. Now they make LOTS of money. Don't get me started on DEA .. we'd have another long thread. <grin>

Since the money HAD been legally acquired I thought it would be a simple explanation, as I had the proper paperwork, but when I had to do MORE paperwork (and waste my time to give them my money) it ticked me off. So I went a different route out of spite. I'll probably get audited anyway for it, but not until 7 years from now when the penalties would be most profitable. I've played that game with the IRS before too. I keep good records. You'd like doing my accounting Bob. Everything is there plain as can be.

As I think about this; so a few people did things wrong and now all of us are required to add to the coffers of private corporations to prevent it. Please tell me this solved the drug and money laundering problems.

I see Ryszard posted at the same time. The point of even this little side thing is that banking, our economic system and all of this Wall Street crap is incredibly complex and these so called protesters know absolutely nothing about it. They need some basic old school civics lessons in our constitution and our basic legal system. Nobody teaches that any more. All they think is somebody is getting "too rich" and somehow that's at the expense of the rest of is. Maybe a little but that's the way of human beings. Ever hear of Caveat Emptor? We're responsible for our own stuff, not anybody else.

I have several clients who made wads of cash by flipping houses several years ago and then saw the handwriting on the wall and sold everything. I have other clients who are underwater and really hurting. Who's fault is that? If you happened to buy a nice old Martin guitar at a yard sale for $200, found out it's a rare model worth 9 grand and sold it at an aucton for that amount, does that make you a lying, scheming SOB who took advantage of the poor person who ran the yard sale? That's basically all this is and was. There's winners and losers in every market.

There are probably millions of people you don't hear about and the protesters, lame brains that they are, don't know about either who when the market was hot refi'd their house, took out a 100K, bought a new, black Escalade (black means power and money doncha know), new flat screens, went on vacations and then the market tanked and they're underwater and oh, woe is them, poor baby's, now they're going to lose their home or already have and now they're blaming the banks and marching in downtown LA? Please. Millions more were told by mortgage brokers what they needed to put as income in a basic verification statement for a no doc loan and so blatently lied on the mortgage app. Sure, I make 120 grand a year, no problemo. That's a federal felony too, btw. So if somebody wants to open up all those mortgages thinking they're going to catch those dastardly banks in fraudulent activities need to think twice. Oh, yeah, they are arn't they? Want to know why that isn't being done? It's because members of a certain political party who were running Congress at the time know all about that in detail and don't want to throw all their poor inner city constituents in jail for loan fraud.

It all started with a certain President in the 90's followed by certain members of the House holding hearings talking about how all these hardworking poor people just need a little help from us and they too can have their piece of the American dream and if you mr. banker don't do it, we're going to investigate the crap out of you and charge you with discrimination. This is all in the Congressional record but these protesters can't be bothered to read it. Can't let the facts get in the way of a good squat.

That got the ball rolling and the rest was unintended but totally predictable consequences. And yes I freely admit I'm upset at myself for not catching it at the time. The real "one percenters" were the few who did catch it and tried to warn us but it was like pissing in the wind, nobody listened including me, my CPA friend and his friends in New York.

There's a very high powered attorney I know who was appointed to be a federal judge and took the bench at the beginning of this year. He told me at a party four years ago to not buy this house I was telling him about. He's very blunt and told me I was stupid if I went ahead with it. Did I listen? The market was hot, everybody was making money. When everything tanked and we lost those houses I took it like a man and moved on not yelling and screaming about how I'm somehow a victim in all this. And what really hurts is at the time we really were making the kind of money that justified those loans. All of our stuff was full doc with cash downs and completely legal but we still took a big dump.

What are you going to do? It was fun while it lasted.

Bob

Sounds like it worked OK for them if they had a house in Flint, a cabin up north and 2700 in savings he forgot about .. <grin>

Wonder what the odds are of filling out said forms causing IRS audits and other hassles along with the waste of time filling them out initially? I may not be 'forced' to, but they sure make it inconvenient to not give my money to a bank. Possibly hazardous to my finances.
Like I said; I complied, so no worries I guess.

I've had fun in this discussion, Bob, thanks for being such a great sport.

The guy next door who put out those two TV's that lasted about 3 weeks without getting smacked took them to the 'electronics' recycling depot. When I said something to the guy across the street he said what I think I knew:

"They are inside on Facebook and playing Rambo on some video-game. Kids don't go out to play anymore..."

How true.

My 20 yr. old daughter barely comes up for air. She's even worse than not going out, she's in her room. Didn't the Beach Boys do a song about that?

At least I had the decency to blow up most of my stuff in the garage.

My wife hired a personal assistant. The woman's mother had a job in data entry and the family recently came from India. They did not live in a large city, but she told my wife that in every office, in all of their part of India, you spoke ENGLISH only all day. At first it was hard. But NO ONE actually spoke it well in her office. She's been in the country for 5 years now, left my wife's department for accounting and now is 1 year from her (American equiv. CPA). She's been working on that since before she got here.

Imagine kids being told that when they started work, they had to speak Chinese. Right. Riot right there I suppose. Occupy something.

In France they redistributed the wealth. And the 1% lost their heads. Dangerous stuff once the momentum swings. Maybe they should occupy a Betty Crocker factory. They could at least eat cake.

Time to ressurect this thread. I let it die because there was nothing else to talk about without some new developments. Check this out:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/12/sec-fannie-mae-freddie-mac.html

I had no idea the feds were working on this but I sure was hoping they were. This should make the protesters somewhat happy and validates my point earlier that they've been protesting the wrong places. There's certainly plenty of corruption on Wall Street but there's lots of honest WS exec's, hedge fund managers and bankers who should be able to trust what government agencies say concerning these matters. When they're blatently lied to by these FannyMae and FreddieMac exec's what are they supposed to do when they're being unfairly blamed for this mess? The ratings agencies S&P and Moody's have been unfairly blamed too but what was the source of their information? Yep, mostly these two agencies. Imagine a pyramid where these two agencies are at the top and all the analysis that goes on below them is through the filter of the information they give out. Then go back and research what the Congressional finance commitees were telling these two agencies 5-10 years ago and then get an idea about who's really responsible for this mess.

This new development is great and I hope it's not the last indictments, but merely the first.

Bob