Capitalism and Culture Blog

Yesterday, Congress scolded Yahoo, Inc. for cooperating with the communist Chinese government in providing identifying information which led to the jailing of a man who wrote pro-freedom editorials online. Today, the American People spoke up, too, and Yahoo’s stock price dropped dramatically. Yahoo’s stock closed today down 7.69% from yesterday’s already weakened price. I blogged about how Yahoo had trampled the civil rights of its Chinese users earlier this year when the jailed man’s wife filed a lawsuit against Yahoo for its transgression.

It’s good to see Capitalism take a swing at Yahoo for its disregard for civil liberty, and it’s a perfect example of how free markets can help protect our civil rights. Presumably, Yahoo, Inc. cooperates with communist governments’ demands in order to gain access to those markets and, therefore, make more money. But, it won’t be that simple in the future. Yahoo CEO, Jerry Yang, will have to consider the potential stock losses on the open market that might result from such actions. One virtue of Capitalist freedom is that each of us can affect change simply by how we choose to spend and invest our money. Today, many of Yahoo’s stockholders clearly made a wise decision.

The Daily News reported on two very interesting stories today. In one, New York cops have admittedly stripped a boy down to his boxers and left him in a swamp, and, in the other, it turns out the FBI thinks protecting and in fact directing the crimes of a known killer is the way to stamp out organized crime.

On Halloween night, cops evidently discovered a fourteen-year-old boy, Rayshawn Moreno, doing what many adolescent boys do on Halloween night– egging houses. A punishable offense? Sure. Take him down to the station; call his parents; make him clean it all up or do a week of community service even. But, no. The cops decided to do this, instead:

The cops drove the Port Richmond High School freshman to a swampy area of the 122nd Precinct, dropped him off wearing only boxer shorts and socks and left, the source said.

The boy hiked to a Burlington Coat Factory store on South Ave. and asked a security guard there to call his parents, who picked him up, his dad said.

“Rayshawn was taken to a secluded, remote area, stripped of his clothes, beaten by the officers and left for dead,” said his father, James Hezel.

The cops later told their supervisor that they dropped the kid off to scare him, the source said. They said they returned to find him later but that he was gone, the source said.

So the cops admitted that this was their idea of enforcing the law. My God, what the hell is happening in this country? We’ve become so dependent on the government to manage damn near every single aspect of our lives, and this is what we get. Do we really need cops, if this is how they conduct themselves? Couldn’t any band of cruel, hateful bastards have managed that without the help of New York’s so called finest?

Of course, this argument doesn’t stop with such a local example. Let’s go federal, and see where it takes us. In a four page ruling issued by New York Supreme Court Judge Gustin Reichbach, he railed against the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s protection for well over a decade of a known killer:

“Not only did the FBI shield Scarpa from prosecution from his own crimes, they also actively recruited him to participate in crimes under their direction.

“That a thug like Scarpa would be employed by the federal government to beat witnesses and threaten them at gunpoint to obtain information regarding the deaths of civil rights workers in the South in the early 1960s is a shocking demonstration of the government’s unacceptable willingness to employ criminality to fight crime…

Again, I say, “Do we really need the government for this?” Their approach to ending organized crime, for fifteen years, involved protecting a known killer and directing him to commit other crimes. In this country, we have become so complacent and so utterly willing to let the government run our lives that we have lost all sense of vigilance. Uncle Sam has grown fat and senile with power, and no one seems to want to do anything about it.

Reuters is reporting that Turkey began attacking rebel positions along the Turkey-Iraq border on Friday, and the US has discouraged this move. It seems they think Turkey should seek diplomatic solutions. This is interesting, considering that the primary reason we’re in Iraq ourselves is that we ignored similar advice. Added to that the fact that Turkey actually has a legitimate threat to its national security what with Turkey and Iraq actually sharing a border. It would be interesting to see how Condoleeza Rice would respond to the question of whether or not Turkey should take military options off the table– something the US continually says it will not do when it comes to our difficulties with other far-flung nations like Iran and North Korea, where it unfortunately seems exceedingly likely that we’ll turn our military attention if we ever get ourselves out of Iraq.

The US government has said it’s considering joint action against the PKK, which seems to suggest that they’re not actually opposed to military action as long as we’re the ones running the show.

My own personal experience trying to get bank drafts honored at North Fork Bank, Chase Bank, and others has led to the unfortunate conclusion that several consumer banks in the United States are falsely advertising that they offer checking accounts. As defined by Article 3 of the Uniform Commercial Code, a check is:

(i) a draft, other than a documentary draft, payable on demand and drawn on a bank or (ii) a cashier’s check or teller’s check. An instrument may be a check even though it is described on its face by another term, such as “money order.”

Pay particular attention to the words “payable on demand". North Fork, Chase, and others, however, will not honor any check presented to them unless the person making the presentment also holds an account at their bank. Note that the definition of a “check” does not allow for any such limitation. The instruments these and other such banks offer their account holders, therefore, may be negotiable instruments, but they are not checks. By publicly soliciting consumers for checking account products, they are guilty of false advertising.

All American consumers would do well to review the terms of the negotiable instruments their banks are referring to as “checks". If they will not honor the check when presentment is made by a “person entitled to enforce” without further limitations, then the bank is not providing a true checking account.

Why is this important? Apart from false advertising, which is bad enough, it encourages banks not to hold sufficient actual currency to back all of their accounts. If they only have to give real cash to existing customers, and no one else, then what’s to stop them from keeping little cash on hand at all? You must remember that wire transfers from one bank to another only represent money. American currency is not, itself, electronic. It is dollars and cents. And American banks should not be allowed to substitute the representation of money for the real thing without fully disclosing that to consumers. A “check” is an order to pay real money. To offer anything else and call it a check is a dangerous act of fraud.