I have two tasks:

• Exchange a quantity of Slovak koruna banknotes for euro notes
• Purchase a number of commemorative coins for a friend who is a collector

I hand over the banknotes, my card with my account number and my canceled US passport, asking to exchange the money for euros. The teller lady flips through the passport a few times, checking the data page and my visa page. She types in the passport number and confirms it against my account records on her computer screen, satisfied that they match. She then returns to look, curiously, at the four holes punched through the passport booklet, then picks up a telephone, signaling me to wait a bit.

Nope, that's not the guy.

A supervisor lady comes over. I tell her that the passport is canceled. She steps away to speak to someone out of sight for a few seconds, and comes back to tell me that they can’t accept the passport since it’s no longer valid. “I’m sorry,” I say, “but I probably don’t have any document, then, that will be sufficient.” I present my still-valid Florida driver’s license and the notarized copy of passport and visa I had made before the passport was canceled. No love. The supervisor steps away again, this time for about ten minutes. She’s on the telephone with someone.

While she’s away, I briefly address the teller, saying, “This is a matter of identity; I lost my citizenship, not my identity.” She just smiles emptily, and asks my patience for waiting.

The supervisor comes back and apologizes, saying that she’s spoken to the bank’s legal department. The passport can’t be accepted since it’s no longer a valid document.

All I wanted to do was exchange one pile of fiat currency for a different pile, and maybe buy some shiny metal tokens with the remainder. I didn’t even need any access to my accounts.

I wonder if, when the US State Department person was operating the hole punch on my passport, little wisps of smoke might have been observed coming out — magic smoke which wafted away, carrying my identity as well as my citizenship along with it.

There was a time when presenting ID at a bank was done for only one purpose: to verify that the person attempting to withdraw money from a given account is actually an owner of that account. Just ten years ago in the US I could walk into a bank and deposit cash or endorsed checks into any account, even one I didn’t own, without needing to present any ID at all. I haven’t tracked exactly what’s gone on in the US banking system lately, but with the introduction of POS fingerprinting and all manner of other “Know Your Customer” measures and such mandated under the guise of combating money laundering — which isn’t even a real crime — I imagine the situation there has only gotten worse.

You are not the bank’s customer any more. The bank’s primary customer is the state. You are just an epiphenomenon, fluttering about that core, corrupt relationship.

If the bank people wanted to serve me, they would have responded to my letter asking about alternative forms of identification differently than they did. Instead of saying, “you must bring us one of these official documents,” they could have said, “come to our office, satisfy us of your identity; we will then take your photo and put it in the computer, and establish a password by which you can access your account at the branch.”

Remarkably, I can log on to the bank’s internet banking website using nothing more than a password and GRID Card code. I can move money between accounts, issue payment orders, even invest in securities. Nobody even needs to see my face. Yet that same method of authentication is unavailable or unacceptable if I appear in person at the branch.

So, whatever. My collector friend won’t get his coins unless he can find someone else in Slovakia to deal with it for him. And I’ll phone up the guy I know who operates as a black-market money changer and see what kind of rate he’s giving on Slovak koruna notes. I’ll bet it’s still better than the official exchange rate.

Roderick, do I get Agorist Demerit Points for this, or issue them?

From The Guardian:

Slovaks open probe over possible euro leak-paper

BRATISLAVA, June 17 (Reuters) – The Slovak central bank (NBS) is investigating a suspected leak of information after suspicious deals took place before Slovakia revalued the crown’s euro parity peg last month, the daily Sme reported on Tuesday.

Slovakia revalued the central parity within the euro zone waiting room, the Exchange Rate Mechanism 2, by 15 percent to 30.1260 per euro on May 28, following rapid appreciation in the crown.

The unit jumped sharply in the hours before the revaluation. Dealers said players not usually active in the market had bought 500 million euros’ ($768 million) worth of the currency before the official release of the news, SME reported.

The paper quoted NBS spokeswoman Jana Kovacova as saying the bank was investigating a possible violation of a law on the handling of confidential information. Officials from the bank were not immediately available for comment.

Me, I’m off to go jack up the rates I charge to translation agencies now, so they can’t jail me later.

From The Slovak Spectator:

Put up prices: go to prison

Businesspeople may face jail for euro price hikes under planned law

9 Jun 2008

UNJUSTIFIED price hikes prior to the adoption of the euro as Slovakia’s currency might result in businesspeople being sent to jail if a government plan to protect citizens from pre-euro price inflation becomes law.

[...]

Children branded by their new currency masters

The revision, which would impose a prison sentence on anyone who violates price discipline rules, would become valid in September.

Prime Minister Robert Fico described the law as a tool to penalise those who plan to make a fortune at the expense of others during the euro-switch.

“If someone is such a crook that they elevate prices only to become rich at the expense of someone else, the penal code will be applied,” Fico told a press conference on June 4.

[...]

Judging by details available so far, it seems that any citizen who feels they have suffered from an unjustified price increase will be able to report the business concerned to the police.

[...]

The revision indicates a lack of understanding of the basic principles of the market economy, where the optimal price is generated based on demand and supply, said the executive director of the Slovak Business Alliance, Robert Kičina.

“The freedom to set prices is a basic right of businesses operating in a competitive environment, and price changes are not a reason for criminal proceedings,” Kičina told The Slovak Spectator.

Richard Ďurana, director of the economic think-tank INESS, agrees that such legislation has no place in market economy. “It certainly won’t help businesses if the prime minister flatly throws them into the same group as criminals,” Ďurana told The Slovak Spectator.

[...]

“Instead of explaining the advantages of the euro, the government is evoking an unjustified suspicion among people that businesses want to use the switch to the euro to elevate prices,” Kičina said. “The revision criminalises the business environment.”

The best price regulator is competition and a watchful customer, say business professionals.
Lifting prices above the optimal level is disadvantageous for businesses because sales drop, Kičina said, adding that if prices fall beneath the optimal level consumers also lose out because production falls.

An important pre-condition for a functioning market is free access, so that if a business elevates prices in an unjustified way alert competitors can immediately enter the market and compete with lower prices, Ďurana said.

“The solution is to erase regulations, not to create more,” Ďurana said.

Neither Ďurana nor Kičina expect businesses to use the euro-switch to push up their prices to any great extent.

“If there was currently room to inflate prices, businesses would increase their prices today and would not wait for the euro,” Kičina said.

No country entering the eurozone before now has implemented criminal penalties for raising prices. However, in Slovenia businesses and the government signed an agreement about not elevating prices before the euro’s adoption, in order for the country to be able to meet the inflation criterion, said Kičina.

“The moment the term of the agreement expired, prices jumped and Slovenia is now struggling with the highest inflation within the eurozone,” Kičina concluded.

According to Ďurana, Malta installed a tough regime of price controls and a system of reporting price increases, with the added pressure of financial penalties.

“Such artificial intervention in prices meant that once regulation ended, inflation increased rapidly from 0.9 to about 4.5 percent,” said Ďurana.

Related: Police to pursue pricing

In an apparent effort to squelch any remaining euroskepticism among the warier segments of the Slovak population, the National Bank of Slovakia and Bratislava’s regional school authority have teamed up to create a cute little contest for kids entitled “Euro mena očami detí” (“The euro currency in the eyes of children”).

Children branded by their new currency masters

The kids who produce the most compelling drawings of euro banknotes and coins not only get to have their artwork displayed at shopping malls, the National Bank building and a local Bratislava hospital, and published in pro-EU children’s propaganda rag Euro školák, they also compete for the grand prize — get this — a weekend in Brussels with their parents!

Euro mena očami detí contest entries at Polus City Center, Bratislava

The older kids haven’t been left out the fun either. They can participate in a series of contests sponsored by Junior Achievement Slovakia. Kids 10 to 12 years of age can win books, puzzles and art supplies in the “Predstav nám EURO” (“Show us the EURO”) art competition, 12- to 15-year-olds can win digital cameras and mobile phones for their submissions to the “Tak vidím EURO” (“I see the EURO thus”) photography contest, and the lucky students aged 15 to 19 who win the “Euro mojimi očami” (“The euro in my eyes”) prizes for best multimedia presentation will claim a notebook PC, a desktop PC and a digital camera.

Youngsters seeking more passive forms of central bank brainwashing are invited to the NBS website to view an animated video on pricing stability (somewhat loosely defined therein as an annual increase of only 2% or less) featuring teens wearing t-shirts emblazoned with a big golden € symbol getting schooled on how central banking is really okay. Downloadable games for Windows and Mac are also available entitled “Draw a banknote”, “Buy with the euro” and “Coins and flags”.

Parents can rest assured that none of these offerings will mention the Austrian economics critique of central banking or bring up any painful memories of long-gone days when currency actually had value.

Slovak daily SME reports today that left-wing Prime Minister Robert Fico is proposing to make “speculative” pricing around euro adoption a crime (my translation from Slovak):

Police to Pursue Pricing

BRATISLAVA. Speculation with the prices of goods and services upon converting to the euro should be a crime. According to Justice Minister Štefan Harabin, the Ministry of Justice has responded to statements from Prime Minister Robert Fico and begun working on an amendment to the Criminal Code.

The amendment should set so-called “machinations” around the euro transition outside the law. It would concern unjustified speculation around transition to the euro currency which harms consumers. According to the Ministry, prison or fines should befall all who would wish to “enrich themselves or harm others in determining pricing for goods or services in euros.”

The Ministry did not make clear, however, what precisely is meant by machinations around the euro transition.

[...]

Socialist economics

“This is in conflict with a market economy; it is a principle of socialist economics,” said [lawyer] Gazareková at length. In her view, it is interference in the functioning of the market.

Juraj Karpiš, an analyst with the institute INESS, cautions that such regulatory activity from the government could lead to early price increases even before euro adoption. Businesses will be particularly afraid that after the euro transition they won’t be legally able to change prices so as to provide for a new situation in the market. Thus, they’ll prefer to do so in advance.

“Pricing is purely a matter for businesses, and it’s up to them alone how much they will sell their property for,” Karpiš said.

But let’s not allow reality intrude to now, Messrs. Fico and Harabin. And let’s not call out the hypocrisy of using the law as a tool to benefit the “little guy” consumers here as opposed to the “big bad” businesses when the Slovak central bank has been sticking it to importers (meaning anyone buying anything from outside the country: food, clothing, medicine, etc.) to the benefit of (a comparatively few) exporters through its own “machinations” under the ERM II exchange rate criteria in the face of a continuously strengthening local currency for years. No no, that wouldn’t do at all.

Related, and in English: Fico: Government Ready to Regulate Prices against Chisellers