I always feel like somebody's watching me, Part three
Earlier this summer, I did a piece about how our electronic money is watching us. The problem is that silicon has a trace on and controls so much of the citizen's money that if there is a problem like Wells Fargo had in August, where their network crashed, we will be unable to get any money out of the bank.
There will not be a run on the banks in that event because without computers, they will be able to do nothing. The money in the bank is safe, but citizens are screwed, to quote Thom Hartmann.
Please bear with me as I revisit my August article;
In yesterday's news, Wells Fargo had its national monetary operations hindered by a glitch in its nationwide computer network. Individual customers could not access their money at the branch level or at many automatic teller machines. According to Datawire at computerwire.com, it is ranked sixth among the top 15 national banks with almost $482 billion in assets.
Of the first five banks, three are well known in Butte County. Citicorp is number one with $1.8 trillion in assets. Bank of America is number two, with almost $1.5 trillion, while Wachovia is fourth with $700 billion in assets. What these figures indicate is just how much American money is fixed in national monetary networks.
There are two distressing problems with these figures. If another electronic glitch struck the major banks, they have control of so much money that the customers could have major difficulties. More of a problem though is how much money is under the direct supervision of silicon.
Almost every dollar we earn and spend in this country has a silicon trail. Every financial transaction is etched in a computer network under the Terrorist Financial Tracking System. President George Bush has issued executive orders that allow the government to shut down the checking and saving accounts of individuals, thus rendering them as non-persons according to Marjorie Cohn, current president of the National Lawyer's Guild.