After November 17, how will you collect fees from the US?

Are you an Israeli? Do you earn money from the US and have it wired to you? If you do, you probably receive that wire from JP Morgan Chase Bank. As of November 17, Chase says that it's getting out of the international wire transfer business. 'To better serve our customers,' of course. You don't think all that over-regulation from the Obama administration has anything to do with it, do you?

This is the letter that we received directly from Chase. This is not secondhand information.

The letter clearly states that beginning November 17:

• All international wire transfers will be disallowed.

• All cash activity, including cash withdrawals and deposits, will be halted at "$50,000 per statement cycle." How are businesses who deal with a lot of cash (such as restaurants) supposed to function under such restrictions?

Chase Bank representatives told Natural News "everything is fine"

We called and spoke with Chase Bank to ask why these capital controls were being implemented on November 17th.

Their response was that these changes were being implemented "to better serve our customers." They did not explain how blocking all international wire transfers would "better serve" their customers, however.

Chase Bank specifically denied any knowledge of problems with cash on hand, or government debt or any such issue. They basically downplayed the entire issue and had no answers for why capital controls were suddenly being put into place.

The article goes on to claim that this is the first step in a massive US government default. In effect, the article claims, Chase is admitting that your money is not safe. Read the whole thing.

From my perspective, a large chunk of my income comes via wire transfers made through JP Morgan Chase, which is the correspondent bank for most Israeli banks.

But Forbes says it's not so. 

JPM says that’s not what’s happening here.

First, a quick visit to the bank’s business banking website shows that international transfers are still available–you just have to pay up for them.

The bank’s basic business account, Chase Total Business Checking, does not allow outgoing international wire transfers (it does allow them to come in) and cash activity is indeed limited to $50,000 per month. Cash activity means withdrawals and deposits. The account has a $10 monthly fee which is waived with a $1,500 minimum daily balance.

Need to withdraw or deposit more than $50k? You can but you’ll have to pay more in monthly fees to do so.

Upgrade to Chase’s Performance Business Checking and there’s no cash activity limit. Plus, you get two domestic wires transfers per month at no charge and international wires are available for an additional fee. Of course, there’s a $20 monthly fee that’s waived if you can maintain $50,000 balance.

Upgrade even higher to the Chase Platinum Business Checking and get four outgoing wires per month at no charge and reduced pricing on additional wires. Again, no cash activity limit here but the Premium account has a whopping $95 monthly fee that is waived if deposit balances are $100,000 or more.

But let’s get back to that basic business account. Chase says you can still exceed the $50,000 cash activity limit but do it four times in a rolling calendar year and you’ll get automatically upgraded to the next level account.

So, no, there is no cash activity limit in the Performance Business and Platinum level accounts but you’ll have to maintain higher balances to avoid the larger monthly fees.

Sounds a lot like my Israeli bank, which just raised fees on my small business account.... But then, Israel is the only country in the world whose banks  make the bulk of their income from household checking accounts.

Labels: Israeli banks, personal stuff, US economy, world economy

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:42 AM