Banks Have no Fiduciary Responsibility

Did you know:

When you put money into your bank, they may have no responsibility to make sure it stays there. The account-holder agreement you signed may absolve them of any fiduciary responsibility whatsoever as it relates to the safety or security of your money even in a supposedly no-risk checking account.

This means they can, without bothering to check with you, either knowingly or unknowingly aid and abet fraud that removes money from your account; and allow business partners to open secret bank accounts in contravention of any prior agreement you may have had with the partner or the bank; and refuse to cooperate in making things right once money has been taken except under a judge's order--all with impunity!

I discovered this in the outcome of a court case against JPMorgan Chase that went against me. I attempted to retrieve damages from them that I claimed were caused when they allowed an ex-business partner of mine to fraudulently remove me from an account,then remove all the money from said account and move it to a secret account at their bank, all without my consent even though they had insisted on my consent to open the original account.

The judge agreed with Chase's assertion they had no fiduciary responsibility due to a "no fiduciary responsibility" clause in the account-holder agreement--and therefore no culpability at all as certain quite obvious banking shenanigans were perpetrated right under their noses.

It is interesting to note that other institutions, including other large banks, when they learned of these matters, offered full cooperation and saw the trouble immediately. Not Chase.

Caution: your bank may have, as far as the ruling goes, absolutely no responsibility, nor any need of looking out for, the safety of your money.

Naturally a followup letter to the bank's management won a self-serving response noting that no one at the Company had done even a single thing wrong legally or as regards the Company's own policies. Based on their senior branch management's abusive, adversarial stance towards me during a time when their integrity was called upon, this can hardly be credited.

From a marketing standpoint it is essential for banks to encourage a sense of security in the depositor; but at least in my case, this sense of security did not stand the test.

Go ahead and read the fine print in your account-holder agreement--see if your bank will protect you. I was surprised to find out mine would not, and did not.

Dear UFOs: Put Up or Shut Up

An open letter to Whomsoever or whatsoever is in control (or not) of the million-plus sightings of disks, domes, cigars, chevrons, v-shapes, balloon-like objects, flashing and/or stationary lights, hovering superstructures, "ball lightning" and other queer objects in the sky; "aliens" or Whomever is appearing to us as large-eyed, gray-skinned, scrawny lurkers in the dark; or Whomever is surgically removing all those animal organs; or Whomever is abducting "thousands" of us; or Whomever has a message for us about global warming, nuclear catastrophe or our own plain stupidity (including all of you "Men in Black" and "Nordics"):

Dear Abovementioned:

It's been about sixty-five years since Kenneth Arnold saw those skipping saucers up in the northern Cascades and no one knows what he saw or if he actually saw anything. There are those who believe the advent of sightings coincides with the use of curved glass in cockpits and automobiles, but that probably accounts for only half of the possible sightings we've had over the decades.

There have probably been over a million baffling UFO sightings/encounters/abductions to date.

Frankly I am getting a little tired of it.

If you have a message for us, let's get on with it. If you are going to attack, what in heck are you waiting for. Our weapons just keep getting better. If you are hoping to acclimatize us to you, fear not. Many of us would welcome your appearance and the rest will continue to go to work and to shop (just don't make them stop shopping).

If you plan to play peek-a-boo with us for much longer, I would expect your little game to begin losing its appeal after a while. Heaven knows why the fascination has lasted this long and with so little to show.

If you're afraid of us, I do understand. I am afraid of us. But I can't move vertically at a thousand miles an hour to get away, so I'm stuck. Go for it--hover and then split. Seems to work for you.

Overall, it's just starting to get a little annoying. Lights in the sky over China, balloons over NYC, Jimmy Carter saw one, we've got specimens at Wright-Patterson in Ohio. . .come on. Play ball with us a bit. Or maybe just go away.

In sum: if you've got something to say, say it. If you are planning to hang around for a while, come and knock on the door--don't skulk around in the bushes, because that just makes us think you're weird. If you've got some amazing technology for us, hurry up, because pretty soon we'll have it anyway, and then you're going to seem like yesterday's lunch meat.

Just quit monkeying around. After a while, even the best mystery needs a conclusion. Otherwise it can turn into a real snooze.

Sincerely,


Fed-Up Earthling