What Sorkin is suggesting is more of the same, although perhaps with worse consequences. If banks take action where policymakers do not or cannot, they are essentially putting themselves above the law. And if banks start playing that role, where does it end?
What if, for example, banks and credit card companies decided to stop processing payments for any retail purchase of cigarettes? After all, cigarettes are demonstrably bad for all consumers, and secondhand smoke can harm innocent people. Should banks step in to help protect society at large?
Or what if banks decided to stop processing payments for abortion clinics because they believed the practice was immoral? Is it fair for financial institutions to make abortion effectively illegal? What if President Trump called on financial firms to cut off access to environmental groups he believed were delaying projects that could bring jobs to local economies? Maybe banks should freeze Colin Kaepernick’s checking account until he stops kneeling during the national anthem?
Many of these examples are extreme, but you get my point. Just because banks can be used to have a dramatic impact on our society doesn’t mean they should be.
– From the American Banker piece: Call for Bank Crackdown on Gun Sales Is Deeply Misguided
Even in today’s world replete with plutocrat public relations masquerading as journalism, it’s rare to encounter an article simultaneously pandering, authoritarian, childish and dumb. Nevertheless, I found one, and it was unsurprisingly published in The New York Times.
The title of the piece more or less says it all, How Banks Could Control Gun Sales if Washington Won’t, but let’s go ahead and examine some of the author’s suggestions in greater detail.
For instance:
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