Everything that’s wrong with banking summed up in one bonehead advertisement

If you’re looking around right now for a new bank account that pays a reasonable rate of return, ANZ bank has a hell of a deal for you: 0%!
That’s right. ANZ is offering its depositors absolutely zero interest.
Now, a bank paying 0% isn’t exactly abnormal in today’s banking environment. But what’s really strange is that ANZ actually took out an ad in an Australian newspaper to advertise this.
Yesterday’s page 10 of the Australian Financial Review (AFR) had a quarter-page ad from ANZ boasting about 0% interest rates for accounts denominated in number of foreign currencies, including Hong Kong dollars, Japanese yen, British pounds, and more.
Curiously, in order to qualify for this bargain 0% rate, you have to meet a rathersignificant deposit minimum.
For the 0% Japanese yen account, for example, you have to deposit 23.5 million yen (currently about $223,000 US dollars).
So basically some manager at ANZ actually thought that paying 0% interest on substantial account minimums would be an attractive offer…so attractive, in fact, that they should brag about it in the newspaper.
This is so completely ridiculous. But it really crystalizes what’s wrong with the entire financial system.

This post was published at Sovereign Man on September 4, 2014.