>You realise that no bank was fined for _actively_ laundering money? And no banker was jailed for 2008. > And by that I mean there was no institutional conspi

>You realise that no bank was fined for _actively_ laundering money? And no banker was jailed for 2008. > And by that I mean there was no institutional conspiracy to do so. That simply means that the conspiracy was too big to reasonably punish. Too many friends of the prosecution would have been hurt, so miraculously nobody was charged. > But given the potential repercussions, banks are being very cautious. They cannot afford more scandals. Which is what the OP was saying. We've dumped risk on the banks and now they're hurting legitimate customers to avoid that risk. And because it's essentially mandatory to have a bank, customers are being forced to use services that - like Paypal - will hold their money for months or years without feedback simply because they can. They don't care that they freeze your accounts and you can't pay your mortgage, they're indemnified against claims from customers. "Oh, sorry, it was vaguely related to anti-money laundering. Check back in 90 days." It's almost like our governments are trying to make us use non-bank solutions.