Day 7.1

Brief thought...
American banks punish us for traveling. This is actually something that deserves political attention, in my opinion, because travel is a broadening experience and quite important especially in our globalizing world. The decisions Americans in the mid-west make concerning their Senators directly impacts American foreign policy which, as we have seen esp in Serbia, can directly impact the lives of individuals 5,000 miles away. The only way this immensity of this responsibility can even slightly penetrate our consciousness is by traveling and seeing the US from the outside. Ljiljana was actually talking about this to me last night. She spent 6 frustrating months in Cleveland, OH as a young journalist but when she returned to Yugoslavia, happy to be home, she found to her surprise that she was now completely annoyed by Yugoslav journalistic practices. Her point was that those 6 months of outside experience had changed her without her knowledge.

The cost of travel is already quite high and there is no reason that banks need to charge overall flat fees for international transactions. Of course there is a greater cost involved in an international transaction because of the currency exchange. But I seriously doubt that the conversion of $20 to RSD costs the bank $5... Banks should I suppose pass the cost to the consumer but don't make money via international transaction fees!! I'm sure with the number of transactions taking place daily the real cost of currency conversion is fairly minimal.

As we reform our economic system, I believe that this is a place that at least deserves a second glance. Banking practices are frequently outdated, inherited from an older generation and therefore in need of updating.

(in the interest of full disclosure, the writer of this blog just got slammed with $25 of international transaction fees from Bank of America... growl...)