I once had an offshore bank account.
Neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton were involved with my international banking.
I used it to make payments, in Euros, to some of the small companies from whom I bought mineral specimens. It was easier to make the transfers to those businesses through the bank in Luxembourg than it was from my bank here. My little US bank, which was a local company, simply did not understand the process well enough to handle it, and I didn't want to use one of the mega banks.
So, I opened an account overseas. I managed to talk my little bank in my little town in California through the process of transferring money from my account to that Luxembourg account. Once they understood that, they could do it easily. Then I used online banking services at the overseas bank to arrange transfers to the bank accounts of my suppliers. The fees were much smaller and the service was much more reliable.
When I stopped selling mineral specimens as a business, I closed the account in Luxembourg, since I no longer had any use for it. While I had the account, it never had more than a token amount on deposit. I transferred funds for each transaction there and then to my supplier, as needed. Each transfer involved fees, which were built into the transactions.
So, I was a user of international banking, on a micro scale. What was interesting to me was how simple it was to do international transactions directly into the accounts of those suppliers. Trying to do it here was almost impossible and had enormous fees that made it completely uneconomical. We are very backward in handling international transactions here.
On another note - my little local bank once called me on the phone. There was a person in the bank trying to change Euros into Dollars. Problem was, the person spoke only French. The bank manager knew that I was semi-fluent in French, so he called me and I walked over from my office to the bank and did translation to help. The French tourists got their dollars and were grateful enough for my help that they bought my wife and I dinner at a local restaurant I recommended. Very lovely people they were, too.
Heaven help tourists in small towns who don't speak English well. Or, call somebody in town who speaks the language, I guess.
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off shore accounts...If I didn't know better, I'd think y'all might be trying to prepare for something.
Offshore Bank Accounts: Not Just For Putin, Anymore!!
