Saturday, October 29, 2011

Citibank is no longer シーティー

Today I decided to try and deposit some dividend checks worth about the price of a Starbucks coffee. I was expecting them to charge me 1000 yen for the honour so was fully expecting it not to be economically worth it. Turns out that there are no commissions for cashing cheques for gold member accounts. Unexpected win! Guess the last time that I tried to cash cheques a long time ago, I was just a lowly scrub. Times change. So here is the thought. Most people will think of this as just another case of rich people paying less than the poor. The more money you have at Citibank the less you pay in fees and commissions. Well on the surface it may seem that way, but think if the incentive wasn't there to encourage people to put more money into their accounts and this increasing citibanks depository assets? Then they would be out of business. And the money that we save in waived fees and commissions are more than matched by our loss in opportunity and investment returns losses for not using that money somewhere else. It's all fair in capitalism. While I have nothing against helping out the disparaged and ones down on their luck but otherwise hard workers ( the fundamental backbone of building a society ) but people who just want handouts are counter productive and if society were left to them would erode the fundamental order in which we all live. The greater good would not be served.
Too much greed is bad. But no greed at all is just as counter progressive.