Questions tagged [banking]
Questions about political interactions with banks and payment service providers. For questions about central banks, please use the [central-bank] tag instead.
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Has Russia actually defaulted on its foreign debt as of April 11, 2022?
An article from CNN starts out by stating that Russia "has defaulted on its foreign debt", but then appears to qualify the statement by observing that "Moscow has a grace period of 30 ...
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Who is in control of SWIFT sanctions?
After the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine in 2022, several Russian banks were banned from using SWIFT. According to Wikipedia, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (...
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Are Goldman and JPMorgan breaking the rules of current sanctions by buying Russia's cheap corporate debt?
I just saw in Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-03/wall-street-is-already-pouncing-on-russia-s-cheap-corporate-debt
that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. ...
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How did Iran mitigate the effect of the SWIFT sanctions on them?
It seems to me although Iran faced hash sanctions with SWIFT ban in 2012 and again in 2018, their GDP took a hit and dropped for two years and but rebounded again (even through Covid). From the chart ...
- 3,124
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Does the fact that Japan have decided to join the US and European countries in removing selected Russian banks from SWIFT have any practical effect?
I read on https://www.foxnews.com/world/japan-us-european-allies-blocking-russian-banks-swift (mirror):
Japan has decided to join the United States and European allies in removing selected Russian ...
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What is the rationale for an EU country to be member of the Russia’s International Investment Bank?
This article argues that several EU countries are members of Russia’s International Investment Bank (my emphasis):
At present, the IIB has nine members: Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, ...
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What's the point of banning a few 'selected Russian banks' from SWIFT?
I read that several Russian banks got banned from SWIFT (mirror) following the ongoing 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. What's the point of banning a few selected Russian banks from SWIFT? I would ...
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Has any country besides Iran been banned from SWIFT?
As there are some ongoing discussions about a potential ban of Russia from SWIFT, I wonder whether any country besides Iran has been banned from SWIFT.
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Why is the EU so reluctant to cut Russia off the SWIFT system as part of the new sanctions to be put in place after invading Ukraine?
This Reuters article argues that it is unlikely for the EU to include cutting Russia off the SWIFT system.
One of the most important reasons seems to be the financial impact on the EU lenders:
Data ...
- 48.8k
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Gazprom: Conflict of interest between US, Russia and US banks? [closed]
I would like to understand the Ukraine/US/Russia/North Stream 2 conflict and I started to wonder about the impact (or side effects) of US sanctions, since I read about the shareholder structure of ...
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Why did the U.S. bail out the banks instead of the people owing the mortgage payments?
Why did the U.S. bail out the banks instead of the people owing the mortgage payments? Is it because it would have cost more money to bail out the people, or is it for some other political reasons? ...
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How many financial centres are to be created in the EU?
In the The Financial Times article UBS chairman Axel Weber assesed that
the division of Europe is a massive benefit to the City of London because if Europe were united the impact ... of Brexit would ...
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Has any government throughout history banned foreign currencies?
Has any government throughout history banned foreign currencies? It happened in Zimbabwe in 2019 for example. How about other countries?
I'm also interested in broader answers, like governments ...
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Why are Amex fees allowed in the European Union?
As I was reading this answer on Travel SE, and more specifically this part:
In one hotel in London I had to pay 3% extra for using Amex instead of Visa/MC.
I started reading some more about this ...
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Brexit, EU tax evasion regulation, and the City of London
Articles (such as this one published by Foreign Policy and this one by BBC) and documentaries (such as 2017 film "The Spider's Web" described here) detail the history and extent of Britain’s "Empire ...
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How does INSTEX work, and why won't it work?
After the US withdrew from the JCPOA, it threatened criminal and/or financial action against entities which trade with Iran (with some limited exemptions). This made the SWIFT society drop Iranian ...
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How do governments keep track of their issued currency?
If a government issues currency and it ends up in bank accounts abroad, what stops banks from making a 'mistake' during a transfer, accidentally duplicating the currency?
Is there some central ...
- 459
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3
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Why do contactless payments without pin code seem to be regulated at national level rather than at bank / customer level?
I have recently checked if I am able to change my contactless without pin limit and realized that this is not an option. So I quickly checked for other countries and it seems to be set by national ...
- 48.8k
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What does "breaking up" a company mean?
Oversimplify it for me, what does "breaking up" a company mean when used commonly among politicians? What would a broken up wells fargo look like? Google? Is there historical legislation doing this, ...
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What is the rationale of capping interbanking rates to values significantly lower than inflation rate?
Romania’s finance ministry announced some sort of "tax on greed" for banking sector:
Romania’s finance ministry plans to introduce a tax on banking assets
from 2019, seeking to cap the interbank ...
- 48.8k
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Why are payment processors politically inserting themselves into Internet police-dom? [closed]
It seems that you can't go for more than a couple of weeks without hearing a politically-charged story of how payment processors are meddling with their clients business. Stripe, Paypal, Mastercard, ...
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What was the largest case of fraud involving TARP money (financial crisis bailout funds)?
There were hundreds of convictions for misusing TARP money given as bailout after the 2008 financial crisis.
The US government set up the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in October 2008 to buy ...
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How far up the banks' hierarchy did the LIBOR rigging convictions (and prosecutions) go?
It's been reported that a number of bank personnel were convicted for LIBOR rigging, although quite a few more were acquitted.
Barclay's CEO and chairman both resigned following the scandal, but ...
- 102k
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How can Switzerland maintain a banking system which is almost unaccountable to the rest of the world?
The term "Money in the Swiss Banks" is used as a synonym to monetary corruption (black-money, money laundering, offshore wealth, and so on).
Indian black money in Swiss banks
$200bn of Pakistan in ...
user4514
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Are Prized Linked Savings Accounts legal in the United States?
So, there's a really interesting way to get people to save. It is called the Prize Linked Savings Account. The idea is fairly simple - to encourage savings, savings accounts are randomly awarded ...
- 15.9k