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Chase Bank May Drop Support of Chrome, Opera
mwandaw writes "Banking giant JPMorgan Chase may drop support of some popular browsers because they do not 'all offer the minimum levels of security that we require while others may not perform well with our site.' After July 18 you may not be able to access the website with a browser that they do not support. The list of browsers they currently support seems outdated: Internet Explorer 6.0 and higher, Firefox 2.0 and higher, and Safari 3.0 and higher (for Macs only). With usage of IE6 plummeting and concerns about its security well known, the inclusion of that browser seems suspect. On the other extreme, rising star Chrome appears to be left out, too. What does Google think of that?"
"Traditional" businesses don't understand technology at all, especially "consumer" technology trends. Usually software backed up by a large businesses is considered to be a bonus for the "traditional" business drone, however, as any tech-literate person will tell you, those programs usually are outdated, slow and bloated.
Its quite silly how they don't understand it. In their mind IE = Microsoft = stable. In everyone elses mind IE = Microsoft = Slow/Bloated/Insecure. In their mind Chrome = New = Unstable, in everyone elses mind Chrome = New = Fast.
Businesses need to realize people don't, and shouldn't, choose software like they choose a car.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
... does the same thing. I got this message (today) trying to order service using the latest version of Chrome.
That sucking sound you hear is my bandwidth.
You can tell how outdated their thinking is by their inclusion of Web TV. How long has it been since that was even sold?
not all offer the minimum levels of security that we require while others may not perform well with our site
- but they'll still be supporting IE6. Where the hell are they getting their security information from? I can see still supporting it purely because of the sheer numbers of nutbars still using it, but to mention security when talking about any other browser?
User Agent Switcher.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59/
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Why are some browsers not supported? There are two primary reasons--security and popularity. There are dozens of browsers in use today, but not all offer the minimum levels of security that we require while others may not perform well with our site. The security of your accounts and private information is one of our highest priorities and some browsers, especially older versions, are simply higher security risks to use with our site. As for popularity, we continually monitor the types of browsers that customers use to access our site. Based on that information, we know that supported browsers are used by more than 95% of our customers. If a new browser begins to grow in popularity, we will assess and test its security and performance with our site to determine whether or not we should support its use.
Right... Because its sooooo hard to use standards and make a secure site? Lets face it, if you code things right you can support every single browser except for perhaps IE (though they have gotten better). It is pure stupidity not to support various other browsers because they "aren't secure" when you can't give a reason other than they aren't used as much.
The vast majority of security for banking comes from 3 main places. Encryption (controlled by the site owners), Physical/Software security of the servers (controlled by the sites owners) and elimination of flaws in the browser (judging by their inclusion of IE 6... they aren't worried about this).
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Maybe you're too young to have noticed this, but you typically only get to choose a bank (checking account, credit card, mortgage, car loan) for the first couple years. Then there's a merger or your loan gets flipped, and you start getting statements from some other company with different terms and policies (not that you understood the first one's). Then a couple years down the road, there's another merger or your loan gets flipped again.
So, it could be that no-one opts to bank at Chase, but... Chase (Citi, BofA, PNC etc) happens.
A few years ago, before Firefox and Safari had any market share I used to find from time to time websites requiring me to use IE. Since it was not possible at the time (IE had not been updated for Apple in a few years) you know what happened? I did not use their service and I did not miss it, I just used a competitor who allowed me to use my browser. Didn't matter if it was a back of a brokerage account, or a Japanese tee shirt shop (whatever). Now I never encounter that kind of message anymore. Is this a positive example of free market? I am not sure, but it might be!
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
I can understand the "popularity" argument, though it certainly does tend to coddle poor design practices, the fewer browsers they have to check for correct rendering on the cheaper their web development will be.
I find the "security" one much harder to understand(unless, as is quite likely, it is just being used cynically to make a purely cost-based decision sound more urgent). From a security perspective, things like IE6 and FF2.0 are seriously retro; but supported, which makes it seem quite unlikely that they are making the "security" decision based on the presence/absence of some specific feature(e.g. specific SSL/TLS ciphers, "anti-phishing filters", XSS countermeasures, etc.). Further, the "Safari 3.0 or higher (Mac Only)" thing seems downright inscrutable from a security perspective, and not much clearer from a web-design perspective. Is Safari version X on Windows really that drastically different? And is Chrome all that different, in terms of the rendering features that you would need to present a bunch of numbers, some fine print about fees, and clip-art of smiling families?
Other than ignorance or pig-headdedness, what's their problem?
My bank supports all of the browsers I have tried, and I suspect they are at least as secure as Chase. In the last few years, I have used one or more versions of Chromium, Epiphany, Firefox, Konqueror, and Opera (on Ubuntu and/or PCLinuxOS). All were compatible with the banking interface.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
... I can say it's pretty short sighted of them. What do they plan to tell the people who buy Chrome OS Netbooks in the near future? Sorry, you can't use our bank? I'm sure both Google and various hardware vendors who offer such devices will have a few words to say to Chase Bank.
They bought out my mortgage, I didn't really have a choice.
Chase sucks.
'...not all offer the minimum levels of security that we require while others may not perform well with our site.'
Yeah, if you've made a site and it doesn't look in both Chrome and Opera, there must be a problem with those browsers. I'm sure they paid a lot of money to get their site developed, so there can't be anything wrong with that.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
This isn't a positive example of the free market because it is a net negative for the net as a whole. Yes, the free market working on perhaps its last stronghold that keeps on getting eroded is a good thing, but why was IE not being used? Because it was filled with more holes than swiss cheese, that it didn't support hardly any technology, it was a pain to code for, etc.
The only reason why this has happened is because IE for a time was complete crap. Yes, it has resulted in benefits for some of us, but it means that many people have been and are using browsers that can be easily exploited into spewing DDoS attacks and spam (Does anyone still get spam anymore? I think I've had a grand total of like 4 messages since I started using Gmail) and all kinds of malware.
So, while it is nice that it opened up competition in the browser market, it was a net loss for the internet as a whole.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
"We paid Vice President McNepotista's retarded cousin Benny six hojillion greenbacks to lash up a flaky site in Front Page, and if we had to acknowledge that our crappy site doesn't render in most standards compliant browsers, we might not feel like such virile corporate stallions tonight while we're snorting coke out of a hooker's ass crack."
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What is all the "outdated" commentary in the article, and the bemoaning of IE6. The text, typed or pasted by the very poster, lists IE6, Safari 30. and Firefox 2.0, each decorated with the words "or higher".
Those two words largely eliminate fully half the posed and inferred questions about IE6 being out of date and the whole list being backwards or whatever.
My unleaded gas is for use with a 1975 automobile or later. This doesn't make it unfit for my 2006 prius.
Someone in the editorial department needs to go listen to Monty Python's Logician sketch. It's called the _partial_ conversion of a logical statement.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I use Chrome and sometimes Opera for security. I will not do internet banking with anything else other than Chrome or the browser on my Android phone. Firefox, as much as I love it, has become outdated slow and bloated. It's also very popular, meaning it's under attack (indeed have witnessed more and more malware getting through firefox - it's no longer the automatic cure for malware magnet users) although flaws are fixed so fast it makes your head spin, in reality it's always been unpatched browsers that have been the risk.
I uh, was also under the impression Chrome has some pretty heavy duty security features and built in anti-phishing support. To the point that it embarasses the competition who are playing catch up. If anything banks should be strongly encouraging people install these browsers.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
They promote the use of IE6 instead of Chrome or Opera to decrease security... probably they will kick people usiing updated flash players and recent firefox.
If well Hanlon's always take precedence, by now a variation of Clarke's law should be applied: "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"
Nothing in the linked page says that they're going to lock out "unsupported" browsers.
If you are using a browser that we don't support, you may not be able to access our site or you may not have the same level of performance as if you were using a supported browser.
Essentially they're saying that the site may not perform per specification in browsers that they do not test with because they're only used by less than 5% of their users. This is nothing other than a "we didn't test, so don't expect it to work" disclaimer. Nobody is getting locked out and nobody is discriminated against. The site's developers are simply cutting some corners to save costs. Business as usual.
Y'all are posting in a troll thread.
Fuck Chase...I had Wamu before they were swallowed by Chase, and Wamu's website was FAR superior to the ancient web banking that Chase offers. I have to click through 5 screens just to transfer money across accounts with chase, and I doubt they're not using anything more sophisticated than plain https, so any BS reason they offer for not supporting certain modern browsers is just that...BS.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
LOL
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks
My first credit card was from Chase. It was on one of those flyer boxes posted on a board in one of the dorms. Not the best interest rate at the time but not too bad. They steadily lowered my rate over the years. I'd call them up and ask for a lower rate and they'd see I'd been a customer for awhile and had a good record and would knock a few points off. it finally settled at 9.9 fixed for several years. I used it frequently, but I almost always paid my entire balance. I did buy my first laptop computer on it though, and that took several months to pay off.
Now a lot of people just throw away those "change in terms of service" notices they get from their credit card companies, but *I* read them. And one day I got a notice saying they were going to jack up my interest rate for no apparent reason. So I called them to cancel the card. She transferred me to someone else that said forget about that, we won't raise your rate. (I suppose I was transferred to a "stop this customer from closing their account" rep)
So last year I got another one. This time they were jacking the rate up to something outrageous like 17%. (from 9.9) Called them again and expected to be put through the same transfer, but this rep was having none of that. I explained what had happened last time and she says no, this one is not negotiable. She explained that "due to changing economic circumstances" they had to raise their rate. I asked her to transfer me to an account specialist, but to my surprise, I got exactly the same answer. So I explained to her one more "changing economic circumstance" they were now going to experience.
It's too bad too. They provided me with good service, and even had some really cutting-edge features for the time. Back in 1992 they had an offer for me to email (yes really) a scan (yes, REALLY) of my picture and my signature, and they sent me a new card, with my picture and my signature on the front of the card. (I had to use a serial port quickcam to make the pics) REALLY nice feature, and nice to have a second photo ID and the signature really big on the front of the card. To this day I don't know of any bank that offers that, though there are a few that let you upload a picture and can have that as the entire face of your card. I need to do that with my current main credit card, an AT&T mastercard. (9.9%)
I've heard though that they classify customers like me as "dead beats" because we don't carry a balance for them to charge interest on. I suppose it's possible that's why I got sacked. It's just a shame to have to cancel your first credit card, that helped you establish credit, that you've had for almost 20 years.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The reason that IE6 is included is because it's currently installed as the only browser on 140,000 Chase employee workstations, laptops, etc. If IE6 was blocked then Chase employees would be unable to bank with Chase from the office.
The scripting engine in Chrome is at least twice as fast as the one in IE, and it's stable. The first thing I noticed was that Facebook didn't work well in IE. I got sick of Facebook, and stopped using Chrome for a while. Then I noticed that a couple sites I use a lot both work reliably in Chrome. I had been blaming those sites for having bad scripts. Nope. It's IE.
Now, perhaps this is because I went through my IE settings and turned off anything that I thought might make me vulnerable. I don't run AV, so I tend to go through all the security tweaks for IE.
Maybe, just maybe, if I set IE back to defaults it would work OK with the aforementioned sites. I won't do that. So many MS problems are due to insecure default settings, almost as much as the software itself.
So. There's Chrome, it works on these sites, so I use it. Many people sitting behind PCs won't try alternative browsers. They'll just think the site is slow or unreliable.
I don't know what MS is doing with IE. Maybe they're too distracted with smartphones and Bing. Maybe Google's brain power, revenue, and "momentum" is just crushing MS in the browser space. Whatever it is, the failure of IE is now painfully obvious, not just from a security standpoint; but useability. To reiterate, I suspect the scripting engine, since the sites where I've observed problems tend seem to be fairly script intensive. Anything that processes AJAX requests is twice as fast, or faster in Chrome. IE sometimes "forgets" drop-down settings or refuses to take input. Chrome just works.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
People spend more time figuring out what kind of a vacuum cleaner they are going to buy than thinking about the bank they will put their money into.
There is no competition and the reasons are that government now plans/runs the economy. Chase will have their customers, nobody will be leaving because Chase is going to drop support for a browser. Nobody will be leaving if Chase continues gambling with deposits. Nobody will be leaving even if Chase continues trading any kinds of derivatives.
The reason for this is FDIC, the Fed insuring the deposits, which creates a set of problems:
1. The banks don't have a reason to care about earning customers' trust, they can start gambling with your deposits.
2. The people don't care and don't pay attention where their money is.
3. Competitiveness between banks is no longer that important, this is a problem, small banks start losing out to bigger ones just based on this alone.
4. Large banks do gamble with your money, as they also receive Free Money from the Fed they become bigger and bigger, until they are... "Too Big To Fail" *(a government creation, in reality they are too big to exist at that point.)
FDIC, just like Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac etc., create a moral hazard for everybody - the creditors and the debtors.
Government shouldn't be in insurance business at all, it is terrible at assessing risks, for reference see Ben Bernanke sitting the middle of a huge credit bubble he helped to create and not seeing it at all even while staring right into its face (I am talking about the housing bubble and that guys saying: we don't have a bubble in 2007!
INTERVIEWER: Tell me, what is the worst-case scenario? We have so many economists coming on our air saying 'Oh, this is a bubble, and it's going to burst, and this is going to be a real issue for the economy.' Some say it could even cause a recession at some point. What is the worst-case scenario if in fact we were to see prices come down substantially across the country?
BERNANKE: Well, I guess I don't buy your premise. It's a pretty unlikely possibility. We've never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don't think it's gonna drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though. - these are the people who will now, under new Obama's financial reform will be watching for the signs of bad things about to happen? Seriously? Really? You must be kidding me?
Banks must NOT be Federally insured, any insurance must be private and insurers must provide information on the conditions of insurance, the payments etc., so that risk can be evaluated by the banks' customers.
Many will say: but how do you expect an average person to look and understand.... well I guess that's what arithmetic is for.
People NEED competition in banks just like in anything else, otherwise soon enough all banks will be one same too big to fail, only IE is allowed mega-bank, and the problems will not be limited to just what kind of browser the banks allows you to use on their site, that will be the smallest of the problems.
You can't handle the truth.
... for a Fortune 50 company that received flack for something similar, I can assure it's not a safety thing so much as it is a laziness thing. The internal standard is IE6, therefore most developers have it on their machine and develop/test against it. To officially add support for other browsers would require QA to have all of the browser/machine combo's and likewise for development.
Use standards and you won't have that problem? Wrong, because MS doesn't follow the standards. Which means that we end up writing two versions (minimum) - one for standards compliant and one for IE.
Use a javascript package to make IE compliant? Can't. Corporate architecture doesn't allow us to use open source or third party libraries.
End of the day... it's laziness, not security.
My credit union, which is part of a not-that-big state university, has supported Firefox on their web site for years. They also support non-alphanumeric characters in your password, but that's a separate rant of mine. If a fairly small credit union can manage this stuff, there's no reason for a giant bank not to be able to.
If not banning Windows, they should create a Chase-branded native Windows software client for their customers to use so they don't use a browser at all.
Or send out OS boot cds :)
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As I once wrote to my bank: "I'll switch banks before I switch browsers".
you typically only get to choose a bank (checking account, credit card, mortgage, car loan) for the first couple years.
I had this happen with my first bank. Smallish savings and loan, a local bank. At one point they said they were going to start charging for the checking account. I went down and talked with them and they cut me a deal. If I started using electronic statements they'd keep the checking free. There was also a "service charge" on my savings account if I didn't maintain a minimum balance, which went away also. Things stayed that way for some years.
Then the bank merged with a larger bank, and suddenly I started seeing money disappearing out of my savings. Now I'd never really actually used it, and only had $50 or so in it, but they were eating about $2/month off it in a service charge. So I called them and they said they'd changed their policies after the merger, and that's how things were going to be now. So picked up all my money and moved it to a local credit union. They take really good care of me.
You'd think things like this would be so destructive to your customer base that they'd have to think twice about it, yet they just do it without batting an eyelash. And so we walk. And they don't seem to care?
Funny, I forgot to take the money out of savings. I stopped checking my electronic statements when I closed my checking account. Anyway, got a notice some time later saying my savings account now had a negative balance. So I gave them a call to laugh at them and tell them they could close the account. I was almost expecting them to tell me to come pay the $1.50 or whatever negative on the account, but they didn't have THAT much nerve. Idiots.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
have you considered for a second that he might have known we were in the middle of a bubble, but not wanted to pop it ? Newsflash: people lie all the time.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Some people do change banks, just not enough. I was very unhappy with BofA's funds availability policy in TX after moving from Cal. I found a bank in TX that had an acceptable policy and I switched. OTOH a friend of mine complains incessantly about wells fargo, but everytime I suggest switching, he says it is too much trouble, which I think is your point:) I keep trying to get him to switch but to no avail.
In case of Ben I prefer to keep to the KISS principle and use the Occam's Razor. Just a few days ago the guy said he doesn't understand why gold is rallying. Really, he doesn't, that's what he said.
Maybe he is lying, but I think he is just useless, he is the perfect case that supports Peter Principle, he is stuck within his level of incompetence.
You can't handle the truth.
and where to find them.
JP Morgan IT staff: "These outdated browsers aren't secure!"
JP Morgan Financial Guru: "We're going to make a fortune on securitizing these browsers! Start the rumor, tell 'em we're dropping everything we've got!"
The key is that most people don't walk.
having your money in a large US bank that is only propped up by the Fed, who let them borrow taxpayer money to make their balance sheets is asking for trouble. Now that I am becoming a fan of Chrome, I have another reason not to bother with Chase Bank, even if they continue to chop down forests to get my business.
No the key is the wrong people walk...the people with $50 in a savings account. The guys with $500,000 (i.e. the customers the bank wants) are not subject to the same goofy treatment. The ones who walk are too few and too small to make a dent so the bank doesn't care. The bank (and all their competitors) wants to spend the minimum amount of effort and money possible servicing a small individual account. They have a gazillion of them and it is only profitable in the mass numbers of them giving them capital to invest. Hence they have to be evil enough to drive herds away before it affects them and since most banks are equally evil once they get to the size of bank we're talking about it's pretty much a zero sum game. Now if you have big money it's a different story and the customer service is great. It's the nature of world...get used to it.
Well, that's one anecdote. I have the opposite experience. My primary credit card is also the first credit card I ever got. Mine did have a low interest rate. Over the years the card changed hands to two different banks through mergers, and now it's with Chase. Each time the brand logo on my card changed, I was been grandfathered in with the same APR as before. I've been with Chase for a while now, and though it wasn't even by choice, I'm perfectly happy with them as they have never given me anything but good service. They even recently upgraded my card to one of their "premium" products -- while keeping me at the same interest rate, which currently stands at 4.65% (yes, you read that right). And no, I am not anything close to "rich," by any stretch of the imagination.
My guess is that your experience is due to the nature of the product you received from Chase. By "product," I mean card -- not all credit cards are the same, even when issued by the same bank. Different product lines tolerate different terms. For example, I once had a card that had a very poor interest rate, like they were giving you. I called up my bank and said I really couldn't see using this card ever again, given that my other cards offered so much better terms. The lady on the phone looked at my records and said yes, indeed I should qualify for a better rate -- but that unfortunately she couldn't give it to me with this particular card. She recommended I apply for a new card from the same bank, and she could take my application over the phone. I did so and they mailed me out my new card in a week or two, with the interest rate cut in half. I threw the old card away. Of course, which products you qualify for largely depend on your credit score.
Breakfast served all day!
They will not be bothered with people going away if enough people stay. As long as they come up ahead, the change they implemented will be done.
I know of a company who raised their prices for a certain product. Almost all customers for that product left, which was the point as they were not making enough money on it. They were not allowed to end the contract from their side, so when the customer asked to leave, they were 'nice enough' to not hold the customer to his end of the contract.
At another company they made service so bad that customers left, which again was what they wanted.
Companies care about making money, not about how much customers they have (unless that is directly linked to makinging money). That means that they do not want all the customers all the time, just those that make them money. If you don't make them money, they don't want your business.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
That's why I do most of my banking at credit unions. I have yet to be burned in any major way by a credit union. Since members are the only ones that can borrow from them typically and the funds are lent by other members you get an institution that is responsible primarily to the people it does business with, not some random assortment of investors.
Basically, when there's a fairly significant liability there, years of experience and large corporate backing do matter. They maybe shouldn't, but they do.
Sure, but if they can't provide concrete data for choosing one browser over another, then how can you be sure they are making the right choice. I understand their argument, but I have no evidence that they proved these browsers to be unreliable.
What we need is a security acid test, akin to the CSS3 acid test, that is recognized by security and financial institutions, that can be run by browser developers to see whether they meet the mark. If there is one already, was it used and where are the results? If there isn't one, then how can we be sure browsers are being audited in an equal manner? For me the test should be something that any capable security expert could feel comfortable with and include minimum requirements for passing and also "nice to have features" that can give the browser bonus marks.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Considering Chase was one of the few that played recklessly with our money, I guess I wouldn't have to worry about their insecure system anyway because I wouldn't give them my money if they were the last bank in America. Instead it will be the First National Bank of My Mattress.
They want IE6 back, who knows why? There is a serious point though *lazy IT departments who push us towards IE6 because they haven't updated in a damn decade make the internet less secure, and less free. :(
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
"With usage of IE6 plummeting and concerns about its security well known, the inclusion of that browser seems suspect."
Well, gs.statcounter has IE6 listed 4th, and only beaten by newer versions of IE and one version of Firefox. My company (not Chase) tracks browsers by type/version, and more than 80% of clients identify themselves as IE6. It would be silly for us not to support IE6, just as I'm sure Chase is basing their decision on similar experience with client data. If alternative browser users want to tinker with their browser identity, they should make sure they're not identifying as IE6, or they're just contributing to the problem of IE6's continued support.
If I was a bank I would just completely avoid recommending any particular browser. Once you do that you are complicit / partially liable when a user is compromised by following your advice. As a case in point, as far as I know, FireFox 2.0 is no longer receiving security updates and there are known vulnerabilities in the last released version. Chase recommending this browser could easily be taken as an argument in a court case if a user is compromised while using their web site.
It would be far more sensible for the bank to impose no limitations and simply recommend that all users acquire a secure and standards compliant browser for using their web site.
I used their on-line service feed-back page to say I would do on-line banking with them unless they supported Chrome. I bet if enough people do that they will change their minds. Chase feedback link: https://www.chase.com/ccp/index.jsp?pg_name=ccpmapp/shared/assets/page/email#
That thing should never be the same as your banking password. By design, it must be different.
However, it's still a terrible idea (and as far as I know has been hacked, as has its MasterCard SecureCode counterpart), so offers no meaningful security benefits whatever.
Er, sorry to state the obvious, but can't these browsers simply spoof as IE if they wanted to?
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I think it's just they're way of saying that if you've got the competence to install Chrome, then perhaps you shouldn't be buying from us.
Are you implying that someone who has the competence to install Chrome but isn't within the phone company's DSL service area should get dial-up?
...at least with Chrome. It's more popular than Safari. It's more secure than IE, meaning it's surely secure enough. Their announcement is titled "UPGRADE YOUR BROWSER BY JULY 18". Their IT dept. is assuming a person only using their browser for online banking.
I have two accounts that use it.
- NatWest use characters from my normal on-line banking password (this is MasterCard SecureCode).
- Co-operative Bank use characters from my "memorable name", which is one of about five options used when logging in (as well as a password). (This is Verified by VISA.)
I'd guess a lot of people do their online banking on break room PCs at work. These run the same browser that every other PC at work runs, namely IE 6. It's the newest IE available for Windows 2000, and it's the one against which all the company's intranet software was tested. Blocking IE 6 would lead to people switching to Wells Fargo or PNC or Fifth Third or (worse yet) one of those hippie credit unions.
Cancelling the card doesn't hurt much, if at all
I don't know about the "health" of the banks mentioned, all I know is they are huge but as we have seen in couple of years, being "huge" doesn't change a thing if you are doing bad. The bigger you are, media/govt/stats tries to hide your bad situation.
I wouldn't want to alert anyone but, if a bank in 2010 can't support pretty standard (and easy) to support browsers like Google giant's Chrome or Opera, the hidden mobile giant browser... I would be really worried about their resources and what kind of management they have.
For example, if my bank didn't let me in with Opera (or Mobile) tomorrow, I would switch the bank for above reasons, not the browser I (can) use. There is "can" factor too. This is not IE 6 situation here, I don't tell your site has to pass w3c validator either. If you don't code your site like 6 year old, both Chrome and Opera can function very well even with Quirks mode. It is not like Amaya we use here.
I've heard though that they classify customers like me as "dead beats" because we don't carry a balance for them to charge interest on.
Not really. If paying the credit card bill in full each month made a cardholder a deadbeat, then how would American Express be making beaucoup bucks off such "deadbeats"? Banks that issue credit cards make money on merchant fees, and when a cardholder pays in full, the bank has the money to lend to another customer.
If you don't carry a balance, what do you care WHAT the interest rate is
Once the bank has raised a charge account's APR to the maximum allowed by law, the next step is to add an annual fee.
If these guys are _that_ pathetic, better switch the bank rather than using something like user agent hacks.
I mean, what if they manage to code really messy, enough to say "we don't support them" (they just did) which will do some real World money harm to you?
If I heard something like that from my bank, I would carefully RTFA, check again with a support request and if they really mean it, I would transfer everything to another bank which has a sane management. I really mean it. It is a BANK, not some junk web 2.0 thing. It is your own money involved and there are very serious consequences if they mess up which isn't really fast to recover.
Too true. I never have signed up for an account with Chase, but my Visa card and my mortgage are now both with Chase.
Now I'd never really actually used it, and only had $50 or so in it
So you were providing them basically no money whatsoever to invest. Do you know how a bank works? They take in deposits and then invest the money deposited. In return they provide you security and safe access to your money and perhaps a bit of interest. The amount of interest that can be earned on $50.00 is less than the cost to send you your statements. Your $50 costs them money. Not a lot and probably not $2.00 but more than zero. Why would the bank want to do business with a customer that costs them money each month? They institute the fee specifically to drive away unprofitable customers.
You'd think things like this would be so destructive to your customer base that they'd have to think twice about it, yet they just do it without batting an eyelash
I'm sure you're a nice guy but think about it for a minute. You were a small fry customer with little capital who cost more to serve than the bank could make off your investments. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but that's what happened. You did the right thing by going to a credit union that wanted your business. But expecting a large bank to care greatly about an unprofitable small customer is naive.
Funny, I forgot to take the money out of savings.
"Funny"? That's not funny, that's dumb. You basically gave the bank $50 and got nothing in return.
Guess I wont use Chase then. Not a hard choice.
I had an Amazon VISA, which I believe was also Chase. We had set up our bank account to automatically send payments on time, and all we had to do was respond to the reminder and put the amount in. Well, then Chase started changing the due date on us, every couple of months. We'd find out the next billing cycle that we'd been late (because they shifted the date and charged us a late fee), and we had to call them to complain, get them to take off the late fee, and shift back the due date. Then one time, I told them that if they did it again, I would cancel. Well, of course, it happened again. It took me about an hour on the phone to get them to finally cancel the card. I told them that they would have to promise in writing that they would never again change the due date, but of course they were not able to do it. They kept going on and on about all the benefits I'd racked up since I had been a loyal customer and had joined in like 1999 or something, and I responded that they were not treating me well for having been a loyal customer. Some of their arguments, IIRC, were rather inane. All I wanted was a certain kind of consistent treatment, and instead they were making the due date a moving target so they could rack up late fees. We now have a Barnes and Noble credit card. Heh.
Nowhere in the notice does it say that you MUST use one of the supported browsers. It says, "If you are using a browser that we don't support, you may not be able to access our site or you may not have the same level of performance as if you were using a supported browser." I'd be willing to bet that the site will work fine in Chrome. Why don't they list Chrome? Because they don't test with Chrome ("Supported browsers are browsers that we consistently use and test with our site"). Why don't they test with Chrome? Because every additional browser that must be tested with adds time to development and QA. You could argue that Chrome has enough users for them to invest the time to test with it, but if they are testing with Safari, they are probably fine with Chrome anyway. It's a simple matter of resources and I, frankly, don't see much wrong with it. I'm speaking both as a web developer and a Chase customer.
I just did.
Seeing as mwandaw wants to feed the outrage machine by spinning and taking things out of context, let's take a look at the actual facts.
From the Chase FAQ:
Now, lets look at the spun summary:
Because many people do not upgrade to the latest and greatest.
Which is why they mention older browsers being a security risk. Oh, and as the summary says, usage of IE6 is plummeting, but as support is existing and use is still high, it is best to support it.
Who the fuck cares what Google thinks? Chrome is not the do-all, end-all of the internet. Chrome is not even that popular.
Would you want to bet that Chase checked their server logs to figure out what their customers use?
And the effects not using a supported browser?
And, about those older browsers?
Ok, now that the truth is out there, are you going to stop being an asshole, mwandaw?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Maybe you are to young to know this but there are these things called credit unions and community banks.
I may not be a smart man, but I know what an inode is.
Some people do change banks, just not enough.
If you do change banks because they don't support your favorite browser, make sure you keep it a secret if you want to keep your friends. That said, I won't trust any bank that tells me IE6 is a secure browser, and Opera is not.
As for the real problem: a browser is not a banking platform, never was, and never will be good enough. How many potential security problems are there in a typical browser that would be completely eliminated with a simple native application?
I left chase because 1) they fucked me with thousands of dollars in fees in 2008 and I was sick of it; 2) post 2001 tech crash, they had the GALL to start billing me for financial services, after losing 2/3 of the value of my 401k. I cursed out my financial advisor and removed all my savings when bouncing between jobs during the bu$h years.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Funny; but watch out. That $1.50 is probably in collections now.
Your position on banks in right on and I agree with you 100% however this started out as a stupid story about Chase limiting what browsers you can use with their website. No story there as most banks I've ever used only support IE or maybe firefox. It's kind of stupid for them to support IE6 when the rest of the web including Microsoft is trying to get people to stop uing it. We should stay on topic though. And someone should mod your post up.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Which version of HTML? IE 8 does not support HTML5 for example.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I'm using IE8 so that explains it. Once you get past IE8, they are almost the same. I doubt I'd notice the difference between any of the others.
IE 9 appears to be in development. Chrome is here NOW and it's "just a browser", whereas IE upgrades tend to do more to your system.
However, this wouldn't be the first time MS reacted slowly to competition; but then started winning. It seems like that's how it was with browsers in the first place. Netscape just *ruled* the early days. IE was a joke, but then it started catching up and passed.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Where do you get your information? Some libertarian kook blog?
FDIC is not the Fed.
FDIC doesn't guarantee banks.
FDIC guarantees individuals' deposits. Your checking account. Your savings account.
When a bank can't cover its deposits, FDIC swoops and seizes the bank.
The bank is shut down. Management is fired. Stockholders lose everything.
Absolutely the opposite of what you imagine to be the case.
More likely it's charged off. Trying to collect a debt of $1.50 is just not profitable...
Given that their website looks approximately as professional as your average spam site, they should probably re-think their IT strategy.
there must have been something off on my search. But Chase's policy is insane in any case. As I said before, if you are with Chase or any other TARP baby, consider moving your money.
Yeah, those are great for people who never use ATMs (or don't mind paying $2 every time they use an ATM outside their home town), and who don't need new-fangled gimmicks like decent online banking, online bill pay, SMS notifications, and 24-hour customer service.
I used to have an account with a community bank and a credit union, then I switched to a national bank (first one, then another). The only thing I miss about the little guys are their savings account rates, but my online savings account has better rates anyway.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
That frightens me due to the implications it has for poor internal security at Chase. They might as well paint a bullseye on themselves for spear phishing attacks...
Doesn't Chase have an IT budget for upgrades, or did they get tied to some proprietary Microsoft platform that's holding them back?
I've been using Opera for accessing my chase account for months.
No problems.
They're just trying to save money, because they're blood sucking dicks.
Now I've only ever had a Chase credit card and a Citi credit card. The Chase card got eaten by a paper shredder many years ago. My personal bank has been PNC for a long time. I know they are a larger bank (maybe not as large as Chase or Citi) but they have always treated me well and have given good offers for services that appeal to the middle and lower economic classes.
I do agree, though, that many banks would fall all over themselves for the 500k+ accounts. And they probably offer protections and/or other services that those account holders don't mind paying a $20/month service charge. Having never earned that much, I've never looked into what those benefits might be.
You can easily change your user-agent in Opera and I would assume Chrome would be the same.
But you shouldn't, because then they'll never support Opera or Chrome "because none of their customers use it". Firefox didn't start getting support from big websites because of people changing its user-agent to IE.
If possible, an option is to tweak your existing UA to include whatever string they're looking for. I remember back in the day I'd change my Firefox UA from "Firefox" to "Firefox, not IE". Having "IE" in the string would be enough to get it past the dumb UA checks, but any sort of log analysis should indicate that I was using Firefox. Yes, you are "giving in" and telling them what they want to hear. However, if it's something that you can't reasonably boycott, this is a way to be able to use it, while at the same time indicating to them that you're using a different browser.
If all the Chrome and Opera users simply stop using the site, then their logs will show that 0% of their users actually use those browsers (even if it's because the site is blocking them), therefore it's completely unnecessary to support them. For a browser-related boycott to be successful, you need to let them know that you've stopped using the site because of that, otherwise the lack of use can actually reinforce the idea that you don't need to support those browsers.
There are over 8,000 financial institutions in the US right now. I guarantee that if you look locally, you will find a community bank or credit union that meets your needs and provides all the services of the "big guys."
These institutions are our defense against "to big to fail."
If you move your money to one of these banks you may find that the teller even knows your name when you visit a branch.
they recommend IE6? wait what?, isnt that a swiss cheese? its like they WANT their customers to get bad security ooh well, i love my bank, they support the most secure browser aka chrome! if you are at work and has to use IE6, and you cant install firefox, chrome to teh rescue!, you can install chrome without admin access :D
no chrome, no security :P
It is still the browser which is deployed on all the desktops at JPMorganChase. It's the corporate standard. They're doing testing on a newer version of IE, and they have a migration plan, but they currently still HAVE to support IE 6 b/c it's the only browser most of their employees are allowed to use while at work.
and who don't need new-fangled gimmicks like decent online banking, online bill pay, SMS notifications, and 24-hour customer service.
My community bank has all that... and more!
... wait, what?
I canceled my Chase card when I got a letter from them telling me that they were going to charge me a fee because I was not using my card enough.
If gold is so awesome, why do people accept actual money for it, why not just hoard it?
I hate sigs.
Well, I was planning on closing my Chase credit card anyway.
There are over 8,000 financial institutions in the US right now. I guarantee that if you look locally, you will find a community bank or credit union that meets your needs and provides all the services of the "big guys."
What a silly remark! The Dalles, Oregon, is a prime example where one of the community banks failed and the other community banks and credit unions to not come close to meeting my needs.
tl;dr
Also, perhaps BETTER capitalization PRACTICES would have made it EASIER to READ.
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Watch carefully, that's what central banks are doing, or are those not people?
You can't handle the truth.
I've heard though that they classify customers like me as "dead beats" because we don't carry a balance for them to charge interest on. I suppose it's possible that's why I got sacked. It's just a shame to have to cancel your first credit card, that helped you establish credit, that you've had for almost 20 years.
If you don't carry a balance and are therefore not paying any interest then what difference does the rate make to you?
My community bank has all that... and more!
Maybe it depends on the community.
I live in a metro area of around 500,000 people. My girlfriend has an account with a local bank, and their online banking site is ass-ugly and slow to update.
What does your bank do about out-of-town ATMs?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
The community bank is affiliated with a state-wide organization and I can use any of the ATMs within the affiliate network. Interstate is a bit more of an issue, usually I just make sure I'm cashed up before I leave. Haven't had occasion to try international yet.
... wait, what?
Surely switching is easy. You turn up and say "Give me all of my money, I'm closing my account." and they give you all of your money. You then go to a competing bank with a couple of forms of ID and say "I'd like to open an account, here's all of my money."
Oh, you mean people are too lazy to switch? Well, that's different...
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
+1
You should really think about this for a bit longer than it took you to write that diatribe. Ben Bernanke continues the inflationary policy of printing money, both long and short term money - cash and bonds, and he says he does not understand why commodities are valued higher and higher in terms of dollars?
If he does not understand it, it means he completely does not belong in his position. You don't understand any of it, so why are you commenting?
You can't handle the truth.
The other problem is they're pretty much all poor in one area or another. Leave your bank because you're not happy with their online presence and you'll pass someone moving from your new bank to your old one because they weren't happy with the opening hours, or the unauthorised overdraft fees, or the cheque clearing times, or the customer service. It's pretty much a confusopoly which ensures there's little real movement of customers.
I think you missed the part where he said he switched over to electronic statements. How does that cost the bank anything, exactly?
Statements aren't the only cost to the bank to maintain an account. While it's highly automated there are still labor and other costs as well. Account reconciliation, interest payments (it is a savings account), tax records, and more. Granted the costs are high but they aren't zero either. A small account even with little activity can cost as much to service as a big one. Hence banks tend to actively drive away business from smaller, less profitable customers.
If you didn't read it, how do you know that? :)
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The amount of interest that can be earned on $50.00 is less than the cost to send you your statements.
That's not the customer's fault.
True but irrelevant. A bank is a business and it exists to make a profit. If you expect them to conduct business in a way that is unprofitable to them you are being naive.
With no branches and no ATMs, how does one deposit cash?
You deposit money at ATMs? You realize that [it's unsafe]?
I said "branches" too.
There is no place that a debit card works that a credit card doesnt
Yes there are. Say you have $5,000 in a checking account and a $1,500 limit credit card, and you want to buy something costing $1,995. Which card do you use?
I would switch to Ally
I have a couple CDs at Ally Bank, but last time I checked, Ally didn't offer checking accounts. Instead, it offered only savings accounts, which by federal Regulation D can be withdrawn from only six times a month without substantial penalties. Has this changed? And how would one deposit cash?
You speak as though the savings account was this guys only account with the bank. It wasn't.
Doesn't necessarily matter. THAT account was unprofitable for the bank. Furthermore he wasn't using it. If he had large accounts elsewhere he might have been in their private banking service but it sounds like he wasn't and so the bank didn't much care if he left.
You also need to consider future potential. Maybe this guy was small-fry, but tomorrow he might want a big loan to start a business or buy a house.
When that happens I'm sure the bank will be happy to consider working with him. In the meantime the bank has no evidence that this will ever be the case.
Because they nickel-and-dimed him on the savings account he closed his checking account with an undisclosed amount in it.
Do you have any idea how expensive it is for a large bank to have policies that are inconsistent? It's unbelievably complicated and expensive. If a large bank is going to change the rules for you they'll need some sort of reason to believe you are worth the hassle and extra cost.
No doubt he'll show this bank the same amount of loyalty that they've shown him.
No doubt. Look, I've worked very closely with bankers for years. It is a relationship business. After all, the banker is selling an undifferentiated product - one money market fund is pretty much the same as any other money market fund. However folks with a $50 savings account don't normally have a personal relationship with an actual banker. They simply don't. As a result the bank has to institute policies that make sense for the sort of business the bank desires. A large bank is not going to spend a lot of effort trying to woo the business of an account holder with a tiny, unprofitable, inactive account. Expecting otherwise is naive.
If my bank tried to take $2 a month from me on my $100 savings account they'd lose all my business - including the mortgage that earns them tens of thousands of dollars a year.
Your mortgage doesn't earn them "tens of thousands of dollars a year" unless you have an absolutely gigantic mortgage. The interest they receive is 5-7% annually. For a typical mortgage of $200K (close to the average in the US) that works out to $7000-15000 in revenue which steadily decreases over time. You also are not considering the cost side of the equation. Chances are good those future interest payments have been securitized and sold already anyway so the bank may already be effectively out of your mortgage anyway.
Sure, most people are too lazy to change but it still generates a lot of ill will and for what? $50 a year in fees?
Yep. Banks are too important to the financial system to be especially concerned about the ill will and they know it. So yes, they can shape the sort of business they want by instituting fees. Don't like it? Take your business elsewhere and you'll both be happier.
Banks get away with this shit because they're about the most profitable industry there is.
Not really. You're confusing investment banking with retail banking. The two have little similarity. Retail banking is actually a pretty low margin business where economies of scale matter hugely. Don't confuse what investment banks Goldman Sachs does with what retail banks like Wells Fargo do. They are incredibly different businesses.
My God, in those post-fall-2008 days, how foolish can a bank be to chase customers away in this manner? Let Darwin take over, and let's hope they won't get a "too big to fail" bailout. They don't deserve it.
If you hold stock in Chase, now is the time to sell. And if you don't, but want to make a quick buck, now is the time to short it.
Not anymore. They used to be able to get really high profit margins on people who carried balances. They did not want to waste their time with you. Now so many of those people are failing to pay that somebody who charges hundreds of dollars a month and pays it all off, getting the credit card company a nice consistent income by way of transaction fees with very little risk, looks pretty good.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
If your bank is adjusting your balance downward without explanation, there are several places you can report it and get action. The local police are not one of them.
It could be a case of someone inside the bank committing fraud, in which case the management of the bank would LOVE to know about it and have the chance to act (I know... I work for a bank). It is even possible (although unlikely) that the bank officers are in on it and are attempting to defraud consumers. In the first case, reporting it to management will resolve the problem, and probably VERY quickly and politely. Search your bank's website or other documents for the name of the bank's COO or CEO and send a letter to that person. If you truly believe that the bank's management is "in on it" then you can report them to the banking regulators (http://www.sec.gov/answers/bankreg.htm gives contact info in the USA). They will certainly follow up (and afterward I can assure you that your bank will hate you... but they'll also treat you fairly since they know the regulators are watching).
Of course, it is also possible that the bank was right and your own records were wrong. Be prepared to discover that you were wrong and apologize if that turned out to be the case. Don't let fear of this prevent you from following up if you feel cheated, just keep an open mind.
I agree with most of what you've written, but this is dubious:
Actually, all else being equal small banks have a stability disadvantage. A concentrated customer base means you're less diversified, more exposed to local economic shocks, and more vulnerable to any economic shock because you have less of a capital buffer.
FDIC unfairly advantages small banks by removing stability from the set of criteria customers care about. There are significant stability advantages to being a big organization, but no bank customer will care about those if all of their deposits are insured anyway.
I think it is important that people understand what is happening to the banking system and what kind of an effect it can have on them, the parent post serves as a public announcement.
You can't handle the truth.
I write a check.
Which, just like a basic debit card, lacks a credit card's "protections and guarantees" that you mentioned.
Why do you have such a crappy credit limit?
I have what analysts call a "thin file".
If you don't carry a balance and are therefore not paying any interest then what difference does the rate make to you?
The initial reason I got a credit card was to establish credit, and to buy things I could not at the time pay outright, like my first computer.
Now, neither of those are issues. But I still like to have a credit card. I prefer to use a regular credit card rather than my bank's visa/debit card for one-shot purchases from companies I have no established good rep for, in case they pull something shady or it gets skimmed it can be easier to dispute a straight visa than a visa/debit, particularly since they don't already hold a lot of my money. I'd rather have a $2000 fraudulent charge sitting on my visa bill for a month or so than deducted temporarily from my savings.
That, and it's a fair safety net in case I have some urgent problem or get hit by several unexpected bills all at once. A lot more convenient than taking out a short term loan. Have to do that by charging though, as it's next to impossible to find any credit card company with an even halfway sane interest rate on cash withdrawls. If you're going to go that route you need TWO cards. One to do the large cash withdrawl on, and then another to take advantage of their "transfer your high interest balance from other cards to us and we'll do xxx" offers.
I have no intention of ever "living on credit", though I know there's a lot of people that seem to prefer living just a little bit beyond their means and are always charging stuff and carrying a small balance. If every month you're looking at all your credit card bills and deciding which ones to pay off and which ones not, you're living beyond your means and need to do some self-reflection.
That, and the final reason would be if I DO charge something, and forget to pay the bill that month, it can be the difference between say, a buck in interest, or five bucks. I see no reason to throw my money away like that even if it's a small amount. It's safer to just make a point of keeping a low interest card so if you do goof, it's a cheap mistake.
Sorry, but I don't have a lot of pity for people that don't plan things out and expect everything to go perfect tomorrow. Comments like yours somewhat demonstrate the commonality of this problem though. "Why should I bother with that, all I have to do is make sure everything goes perfect and I'll be fine". No thank you. Not where my money and health are concerned.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Uhh, not to say that you didn't have a very legitimate reason for switching banks, but if your interest rate moved from 9.9% to 17%, that's a 72% increase. So the difference in interest in not paying for a month would be more like a buck vs $1.72.
Chase isn't really "my bank". It's just the provider for ONE credit card. It wouldn't really be that hard to cancel them in favor of a bank that supports my browser. The bar would be higher for me to switch from my main bank.
Also, if I'm a Mac user, it could be a major hassle and expense to switch to IE. If a bank site is IE only, it might be as easy to change banks than to switch to IE.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
> On the other extreme, rising star Chrome appears to be left out, too. What does Google think of that?"
Who are JPMorgan Chase? I did a Google search for them and I didn't find anything?
return 0; }
anything at all will look like a flamebait to somebody, I am not trying to live my life by 'never offend anybody' theory, it's pointless, stupid, impractical, doesn't work and it's a waste of a comment.
You can't handle the truth.
Especially if he put the carburetor under the hood of the car, which is designed to use electronic fuel injectors.
You can't handle the truth.
If you are talking about the USA, we have lots of competition. People are just lazy or want convenience of retail locations, and the government has supported reckless consolidation (way too big to fail), but there is still competition.
I bank with Etrade and a small credit union tied to my employer. Etrade has the cool techy/webby features, and the credit union provides convenience and customer service. My mortgage is from a medium sized regional loan underwriter that keeps over 90% of its mortgages until they are paid back. There are good alternatives to megabanks.
Lets see, my credit union is on a major nationwide ATM network. So often I don't have to pay fees. It had decent online banking with automated bill pay before my last bank did. (And the credit union never charged a cent unlike the bank which tried to charge $14 a month for their comparatively crappy service.)
My credit union does SMS notifications if I sign up for them, it does E-mail notifications, and has 24 hour CS. And while somewhat hurt due to the housing bubble and sub-prime collapse it wasn't nearly as exposed as the major and regional banks.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Well excuse the hell out of me for trying to improve your readability, mister.
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"Sorry, we're not cool enough to support your browser. Please keep it real with one of the following browsers:"
At least Facebook admits they aren't cool.
you may think you have lots of competition, but you really have no real competition between private entities. What you have is government backed gigantic banks and then you have some small banks that don't have access to the Fed discount window (free money).
Just now you are going to have another example how government kills competition and creates monopolies.
In the new Obama's 'financial reform' bill, part of it will be talking about ability of shareholders to say who they want to see as top management (board of directors, CEOs etc.) well, Chris Dodd's new proposal (backed by Geithner and the rest of the White House) is that in order for a shareholder to be able to do so, this shareholder must own 5% of the stock of the company at minimum.
Think about that freaking number, it's rare for the most giant mutual funds to 'own' more than 3% of any particular stock. 5%? That shows yet another promotion of monopolies, of conglomeration, of consolidation of power and it's pushed forward by the white house and the senate.
There is no competition, it's all smoke and mirrors, you have no real choice, only appearance of choice.
You can't handle the truth.
FDIC guarantees individuals' deposits. Your checking account. Your savings account.
Exactly. You don't have a clear enough grasp on kooky libertarianism, because that's exactly what roman_mir is objecting to. The entire point of the comment you responded to is that individuals' savings shouldn't be protected, because if they are it gives no incentive to only invest in trustworthy banks.
Never mind that there's no way normal individuals could assess the reliability of banks, given that far more knowledgeable analysts with access to information unavailable to ordinary people and far more time to devote failed spectacularly. We're living in libertarian-land, where if you don't know absolutely everything about everything you're a failure.
It's like the proponents of lassez-faire capitalism spotted the caveat about free markets being a flawless system only if everyone has perfect knowledge and drew the wrong conclusion. Instead of realizing that this means their ideology doesn't work in the real world, they instead concluded that it's everyones' duty to adapt themselves to the needs of capitalism, and that anyone who fails at this impossible task deserves what they get.
(Then there's the issue of runs on banks, which is a whole other mess.)
Does anyone know if Mozilla's SeaMonkey v2 web browser with this bank? I have never used this bank before.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
here are 120++ or so "upward mods" to my credit, that quite obviously show that others disagree with YOUR opinion:
1. Wow, who's ever going to take the time to read more than a handful of those? Thorough but superfluous. Congrats on the mods but why the heck haven't you registered an account? Then you could actually do something with all the karma.
2. If you're implying that my opinion is "your opinion is irrelevant because of funky shouting"...it isn't. And if 90% of my posts are still at +1 doesn't mean people disagree with me, it means they are ambivalent because they haven't modded me down either. You might have noticed that I don't quote scads of relevant information in an obvious attempt to garner karma.
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What's next, you're gonna tell me you guys still use cheques as well? Or go to the bank in person to handle business?
Without cash or cheques, how do you handle person-to-person payments in your part of Europe? How do you do so if one of the parties is a minor child, such as giving someone birthday money?
... have you ever coded a web site... like, omg, like, ever?
Sand's overrated... it's just tiny little rocks.
I have. I find avoiding flash graphics and incredible amounts of javascript and doing as much as possible server side to render good HTML standard code works with a majority of browsers OTHER than IE. IE simply didn't adhere to the standard before version 7- they've gotten much better recently.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Umm... no.
http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed18.html
"All depository institutions that maintain transaction accounts or nonpersonal time deposits subject to reserve requirements are entitled to borrow at the discount window. These include commercial banks, thrift institutions, and United States branches and agencies of foreign banks."
I don't argue that financial regulation preferences larger banks. But fortunately it isn't so bad that the smaller banks are priced out of offering attractive consumer products. In fact, smaller banks somehow frequently offer more customer friendly services. The only place I see a real disadvantage in practice is their technology offerings to customers, like immediate check deposit at the ATM, and slick Web features.
Care to provide a citation of this proposal and that it is supported by the White House? There might be some odd claimed justification for it if you are correct. I won't dismiss it out of hand without hearing the sponsor out. It does sound bad. But a quick Google search didn't come up with anything about your alleged proposal.
What do you mean? Here is a discussion of this, but it is common knowledge where Dodd gets 'his ideas' from - Geithner and Summers.
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You are right that small banks can take seasonal loans from the fed's discount window but look at the amounts. After the crash of 2008 Bear Sterns for example couldn't have access because they are an investment bank, so the Fed changed the rules for them and allowed them to have access through JP Morgan
These were the banks allowed to 'borrow' from the Fed's discount window, see anybody small there?:
BNP Paribas Securities Corp.
Banc of America Securities LLC
Barclays Capital Inc.
Bear, Stearns & Co., Inc.
Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.
Citigroup Global Markets Inc.
Countrywide Securities Corporation
Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC
Daiwa Securities America Inc.
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Securities LLC.
Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Greenwich Capital Markets, Inc.
HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.
J. P. Morgan Securities Inc.
Lehman Brothers Inc.
Merrill Lynch Government Securities Inc.
Mizuho Securities USA Inc.
Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated
UBS Securities LLC.
The lending went up from about 46 billion before 2007 to over 400 billion after 2007 but most of that money went to the large banks.
Big banks are getting discounts and bailouts, small banks are getting nothing of the kind. Of-course the discount window is almost nothing compared to the secret bailouts authorized by Geithner and Bernanke within the past 2 years to the tune of a couple of trillion dollars and they don't want to say who the money went to, so there wouldn't be much reference on the issue anywhere until the Fed is audited (an unlikely possibility).
You can't handle the truth.
Your sig... oh, man, it just screams "illiteracy". I hope you're just making fun of illiterates; if not, it's not "for all intensive purposes" it's "for all intents and purposes". As for "whom", I think that word has pretty much become fairly quaint. I've never heard it in any modern speech, nor seen it written in anything contemporary.
My "no bonus" buttons don't seem to work, mods, so I'm counting on you to bury this comment.
Free Martian Whores!
There is no competition and the reasons are that government now plans/runs the economy.
Wrong, and wrong. There are a LOT of choices. My bank has free checking and no minimum balance, other banks charge fees for writing checks and demand a minimum balance, and the minimums are different depending on the bank. The bank across the street from my bank makes you give a thumbprint and five bucks to cash one of their own damned checks.
If the government is running the economy they're doing a shitty job of it, but the fact is they aren't.
The FDIC was created so when Chase goes belly-up you won't lose all your money like happened in the 1930s. You might want to read a little history; people lost their life savings that weren't invested in stocks, but saved in the bank. After the banking system collapsed people of course didn't trust banks; if everyone's afraid to put their money in savings, banks won't have money to lend, which is exactly what happened. The FDIC was created to get people to save their money in a bank rather than in a mattress.
You say the insurance must be private, but private banking insurance was a huge part of the start of the present collapse; AIG, which insures banks' investments (like mortgages, etc; the government doesn't gurantee or insure mortgages) was one of the companies that got a bailout because it was "too big to fail." I'd rather the government had just let those banks (and insurance companies) fail and give people whose money was in the bank their deposits back, as FDIC was originally envisioned to do.
Private insurance, in case you haven't noticed, is the number one reason America spends far more per capita on health care than any other country, while being nowhere near #1 in any other metric. That goes both for medical insurance and malpractice insurance.
Your worship of the free market is frightening. It is not a demigod and in fact without scrutiny leads to very bad things, as history has shown time and again.
Free Martian Whores!
LOL!!! They let people browse with IE6 but not Chrome? What next? Only Office '97 documents?
I'm not sure saying, "yep, we're printing so much money, Gold is rising for a very good reason" would help much ? But please do enlighten me if you think it would, and how. I'm a bit dumb, so don't fear being very pedagogic and detailed ^^
BTW, Gold prices have been rising at approximately the same rate for years and in all currencies. They rose before Bernanke, outside of Bernanke's purview, and in countries that have NOT been printing money and are broadly deflationnary (Japan). I don't see how Bernanke by himself is a problem ? How has the financial crisis, or the bubble before that (which BTW predates Bernanke's tenure), been handled badly from a monetary point of view ? A scapegoat is always fun, but methinks the issues ran a fair bit deeper - or is it higher ?
And to finish, I'm not sure you're right to use "gold" and "commodity" interchangeably. Contrary to commodity metals, industrial use for gold is about 10% of production, the rest is jewellery and reserves... It might be justified to separate gold from real commodities, pricing factors are substantially different (industrial demand on one side, psychological on the other).
Source: http://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I don't know why my positions are frightening, nobody is making you listen to them of-course, otherwise you can read about all kinds of positions that I hold and I'd be surprised if you found them all that very scary. Often my comments are moderated down, so don't worry, not everything is that bad in the world from your perspective.
Now to the rest of your comment.
Wrong, and wrong. There are a LOT of choices. My bank has free checking and no minimum balance, other banks charge fees for writing checks and demand a minimum balance, and the minimums are different depending on the bank. The bank across the street from my bank makes you give a thumbprint and five bucks to cash one of their own damned checks.
- illusion of choice, not a real choice to have a soundly ran bank because there is all that moral hazard created by the government through FDIC and other programs.
The FDIC was created so when Chase goes belly-up you won't lose all your money like happened in the 1930s
- the entire point is that the government is the reason for things going south like that. Don't touch my economy, you won't have to save me. Government was the reason that a minor recession became a long and protracted one, and the way government does this is by getting into economy, by printing money, by setting low interest rates and in case of the past 90 years it is due to following the Keynesian principles of trying to 'smooth out' the natural economic boom/bust cycles, which are necessary just like they are necessary for any other self-balancing system. Boom creates excess and bust removes it. Trouble for the government is that removing excess goes counter its goals of never letting go of power and never shrinking, always growing. Government is not a productive part of society, it is a burden, it can be tolerated during very good years, but during the bad ones it must diminish. The policy is never to diminish, thus all the insane debt creation, all the money printing, all the monopoly creation, all the wars, all the corruption, etc.
You might want to read a little history; people lost their life savings that weren't invested in stocks, but saved in the bank.
- my goodness, did they? Must have escaped me /sarcasm.
Do you realize that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were supposed to be? Think about what FDIC is. Think what happened to the housing market. Now think forward.
Government cannot guarantee jack shit, it has NO MONEY. It does not produce anything, how can it guarantee an
You can't handle the truth.
Sorry, but I don't have a lot of pity for people that don't plan things out and expect everything to go perfect tomorrow. Comments like yours somewhat demonstrate the commonality of this problem though. "Why should I bother with that, all I have to do is make sure everything goes perfect and I'll be fine". No thank you. Not where my money and health are concerned.
You're making a few unwarranted assumptions there. As it happens I have a mortgage so all the "emergency" features you're talking about using a credit card for I can use my mortgage for - at a much lower rate. I also keep a few thousand in a savings account.
I have managed to forget to pay my balance off on time occasionally - maybe 3 times in 10 years. But having a lower rate for that rare situation is not worth losing the other features of the card I've got.
I havent used a bank for years. I use a Credit Union. I get access to my money with no withdrawal fees at 1000s of ATMs across Australia, almost zero monthly fees (I pay a 75c a month internet banking fee and a $1.50 per month Visa Debit card fee plus a fee if I use an ATM not in the "RediATM network" and that's about it) and an internet banking service that mentions Linux by name in the "supported browsers and operating systems" list. And because its a mutualized institution, there are no shareholders to answer to (the "shareholders" are the account holders of the institution)
I have no idea if such things exist in the USA but if they do, maybe they should be considered as an option for people annoyed with the "lets take all these bad loans, package them with 1 or 2 good loans and use some slight of hand to get the credit ratings people to give these securities an AAA rating so we can sell them to suckers who dont know what they are buying" big banks.
Good if that is so easy for you.
For me, I'd have to inform the electric company that they have to pull the money from another account, phone company the same, gas company the same. I'd have to pay the early termination fee for my investment funds and loans (if I had any loans), I'd have to move the equivalent of my 401k to different bank (and there are laws preventing doing that too often), I'd have to make sure that regular payments that goes to my ISP stop at the right time at the old bank and start at the right time in the new bank (yes, they are absolutely capable of screwing that up), etc. etc.
Yeah, it all could be done. It is just not so hassle-free as you describe. The main reason though is, that the all of 5 + banks that I can choose from, it is the same shitty customer service.
illusion of choice, not a real choice to have a soundly ran bank because there is all that moral hazard created by the government through FDIC and other programs.
I don't care if a business is run soundly ar not, all I care about is price, customer service, and whether they'll be in business in the future. Before the FDIC there was no more way to tell if a bank was sound than there is now, but even if it goes belly-up you'll still get yor money. The FDIC doesn't protect the bank against being run badly, it protects the bank's customers.
the entire point is that the government is the reason for things going south like that.
You might want to read this book (full text at link). It was required reading in an undergrad history class I took long ago, and if you read it you'll find that the Great Depression was caused by the fact that the government (President Coolige and the legislators) were keeping their hands OFF the economy.
Government cannot guarantee jack shit, it has NO MONEY. It does not produce anything
It isn't supposed to produce anything, it's supposed to govern. It's paid for by taxes, which as one guy's sig says, pays for civilization. Bush cutting taxes on the rich while starting two wars and mismanaging everything he touched while in office didn't help the economy any, but it wasn't the cause of its collapse, either.
Government set the interest rates back in 1930s, it was printing and printing and creating incentives for people to 'invest' in stocks they didn't understand. It was yet another government caused credit bubble that burst eventually.
OK, I'm going to let you read the fucking book and get to the rest of your ill-informed comment later. Here's a hint: the economy collapsed in 1929. It gradually strengthened in the '30s, thanks to government programs, and finally lifted with the advent of WWII when everybody went back to work supporting the war effort.
Now please go read some history.
Free Martian Whores!
Yeah but are you seriously likely to change banks over a bloody browser?
My bank handles a couple of mortgages, physical assets in boxes, and a bunch of accounts and credit cards. Its going to be a lot easier to shove IE6 in a VM than to move all of that shit to a different bank. (Plus any break costs and stamp duties with changing the more serious shit around).
Maybe for people with no money and a passion for web standards (which I think describes most artists).
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Hey, dumbass, are you still there?
Here is something YOU need to read.
In an interview at the Fortune Global Forum in Cape Town, Citigroup Inc's Non-Executive Chairman Richard Parsons said the Obama administration's financial regulatory overhaul bill will make the U.S.'s largest banks bigger.
An article posted on Bloomberg.com quotes Parsons as saying,"They (the new regulations) will make it tougher for smaller competitors and the big are going to get bigger."
Parsons went on to say the plans will lead to a "denser regulatory environment" and may not create any "material impediments" to Citigroup's growth strategy, he said.
Citigroup is the U.S.'s third-biggest bank by assets.
The Dodd-Frank act, that passed the House of Representatives last week contains what President Obama described as the "toughest financial reforms" since the Great Depression. The broadest changes affecting banks will regulate the $615 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market and mostly ban proprietary trading. ..........
everybody who does not see how GOVERNMENT makes MONOPOLIES and makes them BIGGER every time they do ANYTHING is a DUMBASS.
You can't handle the truth.
Leslie Winkle? Is that you?
There is none so hopelessly ignorant as one who refuses to learn. I might as well be trying to convince an IDer that evolution isn't bunk.
Goodbye. HAND.
Free Martian Whores!
In the face of overwhelming evidence you refuse to accept the fact, I might as well be talking to a republican.
You can't handle the truth.