I understand the system is down etc and you have to notify your home bank..but in the meantime how do we get money? And please don't say "open a Panamanian bank account" how do we get money today??
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Does anyone know whether Cleave has been fixed for international debit cards?
See https://boquete.ning.com/forum/topics/atm-transactions. This was reported yesterday.
Find a good friend with a local bank account (with some money in it), be nice to him or her, and ask if you may have them cash a check for you. Write a check payable to your friend and have him or her deposit it and, at the same time, withdraw the same amount from the account to pay to you. The friend will need to wait about three weeks for the check to clear.
Meanwhile, you will have some time to bake some cookies for your friend and to begin opening a Panamanian bank account.
That was my point when I said to ask yourself who benefits. Who do you think could benefit from Panama ATM's working for Panamanian bank accounts but not working for withdrawals from North American banks?
I'm still allowing for this to be a run of the mill glitch that programmers just need to straighten out.
An alternative is to write a check and deposit it in a local account. It takes about three weeks to clear (15 business days). That is a reason to maintain a reasonable stash of cash at home or to use a pattern of "leapfrogging" deposits to maintain a flow of funds.
Well.
Seems like is the contradiction we have in Panama. On one side we got the government with the laws... on the other side we have the corporate Panama messing around.
Sad very sad....
My bank here, to remain un-named, is always warm and friendly when I go in, and they were that way today when I went in to cash a local check rather than do my usual ATM withdrawal from my US bank because of the problems I had read about. Their friendliness went away when I asked them if the ATM problem had been corrected. That's when the cold shoulder arrived and I was told that there was no ATM problem -- just that ATM debits on US accounts weren't working and a recommendation to use my local account ATM card instead.
I am not much for conspiracy theory, but increased difficulty for border hoppers, and increased difficulty for people without local accounts seems to me to have the potential to be more than coincidence.
I'm reminded of the old saying that it isn't paranoia if they're really out to get you. However, if it is not just a bona fide system glitch that everyone wants to quickly fix, the next question is the old Latin one, Cui bono (Who benefits?) It would not be Panama because Panama benefits when additional money comes into its economy (as when people transfer money from the U.S. to here). So who would benefit by not allowing you to get money from your U.S. bank?
Conspiracy? I don't know. Let's see how quickly the problem is fixed.
Some actions are done as tests. On June 19 - 21 Bernanke hinted at "tapering" the quantitative easing. It was a test to see how banks would react. The interbank Benchmark weekly interest rates moved in three days from 3% to 12.3%. That showed that if the tapering actually were to take place, most currencies worldwide would begin to collapse. In bankerese Bernanke then said "Just kidding" and things "normalized" (whatever that is). If I were wearing my biggest conspiracy tinfoil hat, I might think this could be a test of some kind. But in reality, I don't know.
Huummm. Looks like panamanians are hunting gringos and want them return back... dont you think?
Border hoppers... I like that new word coined here in Panama. Interesting.