Cofessions: Giving Chance a Chance
I am not perfect. Who is? Sometimes I reason. You can not gain without giving chance a chance. This is contradictory to the old saying, You will not get reach by big income but with small expenditures. There are so many proverbs on this subject. It is as old as mankind.
I have sent money to West Africa, even after I knew better at that time. It was even after the expensive lessons I had been taught.
One of these few cases was excused by that I wanted to try my bank’s, Nordea Bank, ability to send USD to a bank account in West Africa. If you have to send money at least do not use Western Union or similar services.
Nordea has a corresponding bank when it comes to USD in New York, Citibank. In other words these two banks are cooperating and Nordea has an account with Citibank from where they pay and into which they recieve USD. So when I order a transfer of USD to an account with a West African bank there will be a number of registrered transactions. These transactions can be followed in steps.
So the transfer from my account with Nordea is actually done from an account with Citibank, NY. For Citibank to do the transfer they must be able to send the money to the bank in West Africa. The best would be a corresponding bank to Citibank, if not the funds will have to pass via a bank where the West African bank has a USD account.
So if the money does not arrive the same day it was sent it is due to that any cash did not arrive at the bank of the recipient. Money like USD hardly exists as cash. Currencies are normally just a number in a bank. You can not touch it, you can not smell it. What you can trust is that it is not black.
After 9/11 no bank dare to handle money that are not totally clean from terrorists or drug dealers. The same goes for refineries. They also do not dare to deal with gold that is irregularly imported. they do not dare to risk the whole business or to be sent into quarantaine indefinitely.
Anyhow, the recieving bank was not able to trace the money and I got it in return. Then I choose to send the same amount in Euro. Then the money goes from Nordea to Commerzbank in Frankfurt am Main. But that is another story.
From that I have not seen any trace of them. What I gained was just the knowledge how my bank is transferring money.
The music of the day is on the theme Gimme, gimme, gimme and I will do not get anything more than more on the theme Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, more.
