Keeping a close eye on the chedda’

By Nolan Lewis

The United States is like an alcoholic father who gets horned up at strip joints and gets caught humping a grilled cheese sandwich in the bathroom at the local all-night diner. You can pretend you’re adopted all you want, but you’ll never escape the title of ‘son of a drunken sandwich fucker.’ Likewise, the U.S.’s ignorance continues to haunt the world.

The U.S. government has now turned its reign of terror on the banks of the world. The Royal Bank of Canada is catching flack from the usual knee-jerk crowd for preventing people with certain dual nationalities to open an American dollar bank account. But the Royal Bank didn’t fuck the sandwich, the U.S. did.

The U.S. ostensibly enacted this rule to stop terrorism. Essentially, the U.S. rule states that people with dual citizenship from Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea and Myanmar cannot open a U.S. dollar account. This doesn’t just apply to American banks, all banks must adhere to the rules–however ridiculous they may be–because they must respect the U.S.’s right to govern their currency.

However, since the Royal Bank became the first Canadian bank to receive criticism for the regulations, they became the target of protestors, thus proving that most protestors are ill-educated controversy chasers who attack any large company or corporation in their endless pursuit of self-aggrandizing glory. But that’s a whole other article. You can’t blame the Royal Bank for adhering to the U.S. treasury’s rules.

Since the controversy has been raised, other Canadian banks–namely Scotiabank, TD Canada Trust and Bank of Montreal–have said that so long as an individual meets Canadian requirements to open a U.S. dollar account, regardless of citizenship, they will allow them to do so. Which is good on them­–standing up to the Man, making a statement. But only time will tell if they maintain their defiant stance against the U.S. once fines have been laid. A bank in Europe has already been fined by the U.S. for refusal to comply. All of the protesting banks are simply trying to cash in on the controversy and steal some customers from the Royal Bank. The unassuming customers, however, will later be denied what it is they switched banks for in the first place.

The issue here is not whether the Royal Bank is justified in following the U.S. rules. Their hands are tied and so are all of the world’s banks. The real issue is that the U.S. is halting globalisation in order to gain control over the system. Long story short, the U.S.­–like your horned up father–wants it all. Only after they gain control will they let the ideals of global free trade without borders come to pass, in which case the word ‘free’ will have been used very loosely.

So don’t attack the poor old Royal Bank–they never fucked a grilled cheese sandwich. Instead we should be attacking the sandwich fuckers in the U.S. treasury who concocted the stupid rule in the first place. If we don’t, the U.S. won’t just be humping grilled fare in a bathroom, they’ll be stuffing the buns of the world whenever they damn well please.