Oh, well that's a good point. You're right. GST only applies in barter to GST applicable barter items, and uncooked tomatoes and cabbages are exempt. The tradies examples still stand - bartering a plumbing job for a wiring job incurs GST, though I don't know that the government has a system for checking.

No, they don't produce physical money. They produce electronic money, and the production of electronic money far outstrips the production of physical money. It is because of this disbalance that people require the use of banks. For example, only about 3% of USA money has a physical currency form, so 97% of monetary movement must be made through a bank.

Not only that; Banks are authorized to issue money that in fact does not exist, via their lending programmes.

Right, but is the Bank of America just refusing to extend credit to Wikileaks, or are they refusing other services as well, such as the ability to make or receive transactions?

Interesting article about the refuse to do business of Bank of America to Wikileaks. Currently, I read form this article As banking fees rise, more and more Americans turn to credit unions that BoA was slammed by Obama. The president belittled the lending giant for charging its consumers a fee to use debit cards. "You don’t have some inherent right to get a certain amount of profit. You have to treat (customers) fairly and transparently,” the president said. Americans, echoing the president's sentiment, have been turning to credit unions in record quantities.

I see them as working in their own best passions and what they perhaps understand as their clients' best interests; no one, in the standard course of economic enterprise, wants to irritated the USA.

to me this is not a good practice that the bank of america stops business withe the wikileaks .
in the banking industry all the customers should be treated equally .there should be no difference in behavior for a customer because all clients have equal importance.

Also in Sydney there is no lawful need to take cash for a assistance that is about to be made.
If you're promoting garlic you may ask for transaction in cabbages.

jamesadams



Are you saying that a bank doesn't have the right to refuse to do business with drug smugglers, terrorists, organized crime, kidnap for hire rings, sex slavers, etc? because they should all have equal importance?

On the international stage should banks refuse to honor economic sanctions against the likes of Syria or Iran just because that would not be treating all clients the same.

Do companies in banking or other industries have rights of any kind about who they do business with?

I think PayPal or Amazon cut ties with WikiLeaks because they were "inciting people to perform illegal acts" (such as leaking documents), which was in violation of their internal policy. To me this is a sort of parallel judicial system, where PayPal can judge what will lead to "incitement to illegal acts" and so can other authorities (such as the government) and they need not agree. So I wonder, should PayPal be allowed to make their own judgement, or must they rely on the judgement of some legal government authority? Are company rules a subset of the legal system, or a parallel system.

For my own opinion, I see nothing wrong with what WikiLeaks has done, and so I see PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Amazon, and the Bank of America as having acted unintelligently.

As far as I know Washington is trying to determine how much assistance, if any, Assange gave to the whistle blower (alleged to be Manning). If he gave concrete assistance then he is not just a recipient, but involved in theft. If he gave no assistance, then he is just the recipient, and has technically (as I understand it what has been published about this scenario) committed no crime.