Welcome to the club, Jack 😕

Both Swan and my family got dropped by Citibank in 2022, just after I helped bring down SBF_FTX. Maybe we were collateral “crypto” damage, or maybe it was random. And that is precisely the point. We don’t know why, because they would not tell us and they are not required to.

Here’s what everyone is missing:

Big banks are NOT normal enterprises who should get to decide who they do and don’t serve. They aren’t private businesses in any meaningful sense.

They’re “too big to fail,” which means they’re effectively nationalized utility companies with a profit wrapper.

When you’re guaranteed a bailout, guaranteed access to unlimited liquidity, and guaranteed survival no matter how badly you manage risk, you are not a normal firm competing on merit. You’re a publicly backstopped institution extracting private profit. And that has consequences.

If a bank is subsidized by taxpayers and protected by the government, it should not have the unilateral right to cut people off from the financial system with zero transparency or accountability.

If you’re going to operate as a government-backed utility, you should be held to the standards of a utility.

If you want the freedoms of a private business, give up the bailouts and the guarantees.

Right now the public carries the downside while the banks keep the upside.

It’s time to end that fiction.

Citi and JP Morgan can’t have their cake and eat it, too.