Transcript of the above video:

Yeah, this is a weird video. The thumbnail is the new Pope, Pope Leo, and apparently, he has a problem getting banking done. I've done a lot of videos here recently about all of the crazy things that have popped up ever since Thailand became part of this OECD - Organization of Economic Cooperation and so-called Development. The only development that I've seen that these people undertake is creating new bureaucracies to bother the rest of us who try to live our lives and productively make a living. 

That said, jumping in here. I thought of making this video after reading a recent posting on X, from NEXT A, that's @nexta_tv, titled: The Pope failed a Bank security check - they simply don't believe him. Quoting further: "Pope Leo XIV tried to update his details with a US Bank where he holds an account." Now I think it's important to note, as I have talked about in other videos, Donald Trump - and Donald Trump, I disagree with him vehemently on certain things, or adamantly, depending on how you want to look at it - but there are a lot of things that Trump has done that I have agreed with. In pulling us out of the OECD by Executive Order, basically countermanding a really kind of how would I put it, it was almost a subversive way, of getting around our Congress where they were basically saying, "well Congress is reviewing being part of the OECD, so the Executive in its belief that Congress will eventually pass this as a law, will go ahead and just start implementing this. Trump came in and said, "no we're not doing that" and really, hats off to him for doing that, because I think that very much helped the United States, but the important point of nuance I get really on the OECD, but in this case the Pope is dealing with an American Bank and America is at least ostensibly no longer part of this OECD stuff. That said, the infrastructure has likely already been set up during the time period in which they were "working" on it in light of Congress maybe passing it. Again, I find all of this very disingenuous and also quite pernicious because once it sort of infects the bureaucracy, it's really difficult to get it back out, so that's something to bear in mind. 

That said, quoting further: "He personally called customer support," - now this is my favourite, so the Pope is sitting around like the Lateran Palace or something, and he's like having to call back to an American Bank - I don't know - we're just living in such absurd times. That said, quoting further: "He personally called customer support, answered security questions, and asked to change his phone number and address. But the bank employee refused to make any changes and told him to come to a branch in person. The pontiff then asked, "What if I tell you I'm Pope Leo?" - the operator simply hung up." It reminds me of that scene from, what was it, the American President, that's the one with Michael Douglas - he plays the President - he's trying to order flowers for his girlfriend, and he calls the florist, and he is like, "well I'm the President" and they are like “yeah, yeah and just laughed and hung up on him. Just you know, 'life imitates art, art imitates life'. Quoting further: "The story was shared by the Pope's close friend, priest Tom McCarthy. According to the New York Times, the issue was later resolved." Yeah, I kind of wonder who the Vatican bank called up? "Hey, the boss says he needs to work out something on his bank account. What's the problem here?" 

As funny as this kind of interlude is, it points to a more fundamental and frankly concerning problem which is the whole notion of these Banks effectively running all of our lives. I mean if they are bugging the Pope to this extent, I mean what hope is there for the rest of us? Is this the world we really want to live in, be it Thailand, America, anywhere around the world, where we're just constantly under a bunch of "make work" sort of processes of being interrogated to deal with our own money. And I've had emails where people have said, "well you don't understand, when you make a deposit to a bank, you actually become a creditor of the bank; it is no longer..." I get it okay, I get it. But the fundamental precepts of banking are the creditors are effectively handing off their money in the good faith notion that they will have access to it in a reasonably unfettered way, and we have accreted over the past 75 years roughly. There used to be a time there was real banking privacy. I love how all, especially in the United States, all the legislation that pertains to so-called "Bank privacy" is always an exercise in stripping actual privacy away from the citizenry when it comes to Banking. And meanwhile, it begs the question as to why, because the public has had to bail out half of these institutions, I don't know how many times, and then on top of it at the FED, ever since quantitative easing, all we have seen is effectively money printing that's undermining our own currency to begin with. So we get it coming and going? It's really, again, this is sort of the Neo-Soviet kind of almost totalitarian type of setup occurring in this supranational context where all these banks are then cooperating and then sharing information with tax authorities which sort of incentivizes all these various jurisdictions to go along with it. And the upshot of all of it is just a bunch more hassle for us and a bunch less privacy in doing our own business. It's not the kind of world I want to live in, whether the Pope has these problems or otherwise. I mean why are we being hassled like this. I mean we are the customers at the end of the day. 

That said, it's going to be interesting to see how this evolves, both in Thailand and internationally, so we will certainly be keeping you updated in this channel as the situation evolves.