There’s another approach to this problem that also would be highly useful, and in a much more general way. The problem is the apparent debanking of Conservative enterprises and others like Crypto by too many banks. President Donald Trump appears to be setting up an Executive Order that would direct[] bank regulators to investigate whether any financial institutions might have violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, antitrust laws or consumer financial protection laws for political reasons.

I would approach this from another direction, a more generic one, in addition to this apparent EO. I would require, via EO (with legislation to adjust and then codify the EO after a year to see how well the EO works) to the relevant regulators, all financial institutions that close an existing account or that reject an application for one—not only debt accounts—to provide the account holder detailed, concrete, measurable reasons for closing the account, those reasons to accompany the closure, and to provide the account applicant with the same kind of detailed, concrete, measurable reasons for denying the application, with that response required to be provided within one calendar week of the application.

In addition to this, I would require the financial institution, since it has already developed its position and underlying…data…to answer all requests for clarity of any of the reasons within 24 hours of the request being transmitted if done electronically or within one calendar week if the request was transmitted in writing: USPS, UPS, Fedex, and the like. In this context, email and fax would count as electronic transmittal.

In Trump’s putative EO, [v]iolators could be subject to monetary penalties, consent decrees or other disciplinary measures. So it would be here, with these clarifications: monetary penalties would apply both to the financial institution and to the relevant managers in the C-Suite and the business’ Directors, since those persons are the ones animating the financial institution. Additionally, disciplinary measures would include termination for cause of those managers and Directors found culpable enough to be fined.

This move is not tailored to political closures or rejections, but would apply to all such, and it would apply to individuals as well as to businesses with accounts or applications for accounts.

One more thing: my move would not require financial institutions to suggest avenues for correcting the reasons for closure or rejection. A properly detailed notice will provide the account holder/applicant with plenty of ways to correct via the explicit reasons contained in the notice.

There’s also this from the banks’ side:

A Bank of America spokesman said the bank welcomed the administration’s efforts to provide regulatory clarity. “We’ve provided detailed proposals and will continue to work with the administration and Congress to improve the regulatory framework,” he said.

If the bank has these detailed proposals already developed, there is no reason why it cannot implement one of them without waiting on Government to tell it what to do. That would be what used to be good old American initiative.