My cousin Delia is a banker. Some years ago, on a trip to Italy, she met a man named Positano, married him, and took his name. The family’s immediate reaction? Where Angels Fear to Tread. Our apprehensions, however, proved unfounded. He is thoroughly decent – nice through and through.
So, for that matter, is Delia. I like her despite her profession. In fact, I like her enough to have bestowed upon her a private nickname – an affectionate pun on her married name. In my mind’s eye, she remains forever dear Dee Posit. I would never utter it aloud; in my world, teasing someone about their name is the height of bad form, not least because such jests are almost always weary and unoriginal.
Individual bankers can be perfectly agreeable. As a class, however, I dislike them intensely. I share this sentiment with a friend who once supplied me with the perfect collective noun: “a wunch.” When she first said it, I was baffled. “Think about it,” she urged. “A wunch of bankers.” I briefly wondered whether she was affecting a Malawian accent to pronounce “out to lunch,” but the penny dropped soon enough.
I relished the barb, though I affected my usual expression of mock disapproval reserved for such lapses into vulgarity. The phrase still delights me in private. These days I seem to inhabit an increasingly internal life. Is that a problem? I sometimes wonder.
Actually, it’s less a life than a wander. My thoughts are harder to herd than cats. This is hardly ideal, but I get away with it because the world tends to indulge women of a certain age. Still, the moment has come to stop indulging myself, pull myself together, thank you for your patience, and declare that your call will be answered.
Now, to the point. I have resolved to express my dislike of bankers through the genteel art of litotes – understatement, calm, measured. So here it is, delicately phrased: I regard bankers as charlatans, snake-oil peddlers, and confidence tricksters who, through a deft mixture of hocus-pocus, sleight of hand, and sophistry, relieve us of our money. I draw the line at calling them “meretricious prestidigitators,” lest they mistake it for praise.
Stellar at netball
Shakespeare had their measure when he created Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (or, as a school friend once misremembered it, The Merchant of Venus). Having never read the play, she apparently pictured the old moneylender as a libertine fixated on carnal flesh. She treated Hamlet with similar contempt, mistaking it, from something she once said, for a disquisition on breakfast foods. No litterateur, she – but stellar at netball.
Why the venom? Because most people believe – sincerely and wrongly – that the money they deposit in “their” bank account still belongs to them. Test this with friends: ask who owns the funds in their current account. Unless unusually well-informed, they will insist the money is theirs. Contradict them, and watch the disbelief dawn.
Noah, ever the lawyer, will confirm the truth. Upon deposit, the money becomes the bank’s property. The customer becomes a creditor; the bank, a debtor. The relationship is purely contractual: the customer has a right to demand repayment on the agreed terms, and the bank has a corresponding obligation to repay. In law, the account is the bank’s, not the depositor’s.
Yet banks do nothing to dispel this comforting illusion. On the contrary, their marketing sustains it assiduously. A few examples:
• Standard Bank invites you to “get easy access to your money for day-to-day expenses.”
• Investec promises an instant-access savings account that lets you “deposit and withdraw funds at any time … making it easy to access your money whenever you need it.”
• The same bank describes a notice account as one requiring notice “before withdrawing your funds.”
“Their” money
Other South African banks may be less brazen, but none trouble themselves to correct the near-universal misapprehension that depositors retain ownership of “their” money. Why disabuse people when the pretence encourages them to treat bank deposits as secure as cash in a safe-deposit box? Why be candid when candour might prompt customers to demand interest on current accounts and the abolition of those ironically named “service” charges?
This sustained illusion has consequences. Noah will explore them next week. For now, I shall wait patiently – knowing, once again, that my call will be answered.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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