Show Me da Money…

Well, it’s not your father’s banking system anymore, or maybe it is. As a child of Great Depression Era parents I heard stories of how many old-timers had a great deal of mistrust in the banking system of their day. With bank failures, bank runs, and the confiscation of gold by the government, many folks would, quite literally, just stuff greenback$ in their mattresses. Mistrust of the banking system was so ingrained in the people of that era that when my parents died we had all to do to track down the myriad of small bank accounts that they had set up containing trivial amounts in every place they had ever lived. Additionally, they had stashes of money hidden in every nook and cranny around their home, just in case… At the time I felt they were overly cautious with the seemingly endless booming 70’s and 80’s and the relatively good times we were in.

Yet it seems that the more things change the more they remain the same. Banks today are continually charging inventive fees for free services that were taken for granted back in the day; even as competition among banking institutions is becoming less and less as smaller banks are continually absorbed and taken over by ever-expanding and fewer mega-banks. Passbook Savings Accounts, while always notoriously low yielding compared to other investments, are currently offering little in the way of returns these days so there is virtually no reason to not go back to our grandfather’s old mattress method of savings, most especially when inflation is ciphered into the equation. This mistrust of banks is particularly understandable in view of the ever more difficult hurdles required for withdrawing any amounts of money. Money that is yours, I might add! On converting one savings account last year I was told that I had to give 48 hours’ notice so the bank could arrange a transfer, and this was by my reckoning a trifling amount well under the $10k reporting requirement of the Feds. This immediately sent up red flags in my mind about the state of our current banking and financial institutions. With the worrisome headlines today containing the changing legal standing of current account holders concerning so-called “bail-ins” and the now regarded status of passbook holders as unsecured creditors, I often wonder if folks are not keeping increasing high reserves of cash at home in safes, strongboxes, and yes, even in the mattress.

As we descend into an increasingly Orwellian Society in all aspects of life: religious, social, political, and financial, we must pause and take stock of our situation on both a societal level and personal level. We are clearly in a chastisement from Almighty God, who has resigned us to our own wills! It doesn’t take much discernment to understand that as we remove God from our collective lives our situation becomes progressively more chaotic in virtually all of our everyday human experiences.