I get a modest monthly American Federation of Musicians Union pension cheque which I deposit in the bank here, but it takes 30 working days, yes 30, for foreign cheques to clear (money laundering; fraud, etc, is the reason you’re given) which means, taking in weekends, foreign holidays and ours, that it’s actually closer to 45 days.
Then there is the bank’s own clearance system here which adds more time to the equation, and finally there are the days when “technical difficulties,” the bank tells me, shut the whole process down here and abroad. The upshot is that I am often waiting as long as 60 days for that cheque to clear; I can’t get a penny of the money – for two months.
Can you imagine how much profit these banks are earning in interest that we never see from these cheques they’re “holding” for us? My pension cheque is small potatoes; imagine what they’re getting from the big depositors such as business and government and investors? The disparity is a disgrace – there must be considerable revenue involved in that manoeuvre – but I mention it here as an example of a truism: these overarching conditions that