Among many worrying trends is the problem of debanking. It is underreported. The victims do not like to talk about it, even among family and friends.
It is rarely discussed at all in public forums. Only specialists write about it. But it is a threat to everyone in the most intensely effective way. The practice denies people access to the basics of life and yet there is no appeal, no process, no methods of challenge, and no remediation.
We did not know until Melania Trump’s latest biography that she and her son Barron were victims of debanking, the practice of shutting down the bank account with an unsigned and unexplained decision in which the account holder is merely notified that all services are hereby denied.
Good on her for admitting this. People rarely do.
This apparently happened in 2021, after her husband had left the office of the presidency. There were concerted efforts at the time to wipe out the memory of his time in office.
Back in those days, I used the home assistance called Google Home. I asked who the 45th president was and the product responded that it had no information on that. Indeed, it was like a scene from Orwell.
“I was shocked and dismayed to learn that my long-time bank decided to terminate my account and deny my son the opportunity to open a new one,” she wrote.
She did not say the name of the bank. Nor do most victims of this practice. They simply sent a letter and enclosed the balance. The victim then has to hunt around for an alternative, now with the black mark of having been canceled by another bank, which raises real questions. The problem is compounded by the absence of any real reason for the actions.
We do not know how widespread this practice is but, anecdotally, it has clearly escalated in recent years. The same has happened to the former president, and many of his supporters.
There is no human right to have a bank account, and banks have every legal right to decide with whom they would like to do business. They can end client services for anyone at any time and have no legal obligation to explain or allow appeal.
Confusing matters is that banks may not necessarily want to kick account holders off but are pressured to do so by their own compliance standards. If they see a business account engaged in activity that seems even slightly sketchy—dealing with crypto or moving cash around in strange ways or taking too many deposits from a strange source—the system itself could flag the account and the process set in motion with no human decision-maker.
The letter could be sent and the account removed without any knowledge from someone at the bank. The algorithms are ruling the people in this case, a problem that has become extremely serious in a range of areas.
At the same time, there is real danger presented when the practice is deployed for purely political reasons. It is a digital application of the principle of Sun Tzu: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Debanking allows exactly this.
Banking services exert an incredible power over our lives. Our automatic payments keep the lights on, the mortgage paid up, and the cell phone going. The debit cards and credit cards hooked into them are the lifeblood of our living standards. Try to function even a day or two without them and you see what I mean.
Having them suddenly cut off is like falling into the abyss. You can march down to bank headquarters and demand answers but this much I promise you: you will get none. Probably no one there, not even the branch manager, has any answer. For whatever reason, the powers that be have decided that your account is not one they want and that is the end of it. There is no one to sue because no one did anything wrong. Granting banking services is at the discretion of the bank, period.
The problem is that the banking system is integral to the power itself, regulated by agencies and holding vast amounts of government debt in a system that is ultimately overseen by the legislative and executive branches. That makes banking political, not just in the United States but all over the world. The discovery by political elites that they can weaponize the banking system should alarm anyone and everyone simply because it allows the punishment of political enemies through surreptitious means.
The Free Press points to “ an emerging, bipartisan, anti-debanking bloc on Capitol Hill.” They quote Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative from California. “Every American should have the ability to take out a loan or save for their future without fear of discrimination or having their accounts closed without explanation.”
Indeed, that seems entirely reasonable. There needs to be some action taken before this gets out of hand, which it will very quickly in today’s contentious political environment.
Experts on this topic all agree: the debanked need to speak out about this now, posting letters and recording communications. It’s the only way we draw public attention to this.
There is a broader problem relating to the creation of social-credit systems around the world, most especially in China. Political compliance becomes a standard of inclusion in financial and social life generally. It’s a highly effective way that regimes can carefully and quietly control their citizens. It has no place in a free society and it seems like our laws ought to be clear about that.
Even if the technology allows it, even if the algorithms dictate it, we need systems in which banks and other financial institutions cannot end services for people without some explicitly cited reason and an opportunity for appeal, in addition to some legal recourse in the case of arbitrary action. Taking those steps would help underscore the point that this society aspires to be free and grant its citizens dignity and rights.
