The fine article mentions "Banks are extremely good at tracking one kind of truth, ledgers." In some cases that's - alarmingly - not even true. Or at least they

The fine article mentions "Banks are extremely good at tracking one kind of truth, ledgers." In some cases that's - alarmingly - not even true. Or at least they are running their ledgers in ways that are so counter-intuitive and undocumented that they don't make sense to their customers. I.E. it's self-serving at best. This is a problem from banks that are supposed to pay attention to large chunks of your money. No? Obviously? A little? Yeah it is. Similarly alleging savage competition is self serving once you move beyond the most common low-balance checking account. FATCA for example took care of competition when it comes to running european bank accounts for US residents. Or try to borrow money against your financial assets - in the US - and find out how much competition there is there. And yet, there we are. An actual mainstream (among the top largest on the planet) bank where 1-3 times a year, I roll my eyes, spend time reassuring myself that it's okay-enough, figure out how to present that nonsense to the IRS, make a note for my own tax reporting purposes and so that I don't have to do the research again after I forgot, and fiinaallyyy move on with my life. I'm sure that ledger works out for the bank.