1975: Disarming the Banks
June 25, 2021
By AHNZ
This is a 1955 picture of Wellsford Bank of New Zealand staff during regular (every 6 months) shooting practise. For most of New Zealand history it wasn’t enough for a bank teller to be able to help you with legitimate account withdrawals, they also had to be able to shoot in case of illegitimate ones!
“It was only in 1975 that the Westpac bank screened its first TV commercial. That same year firearms were withdrawn from their banks. They had a basement gun range at 79 Queen Street, where their staff were trained to kill robbers.”– kiwigunblog
“For many years, the bank provided little or no training in the use of revolvers; but eventually commonsense prevailed and shooting practice became a regular event for bank staff…In the mid-1970s the bank sent over 400 revolvers to Police Headquarters to be destroyed.”- Gun-toting Bankers, bnzheritage.co.nz
“There do not appear to be strong reasons why we should continue to issue revolvers to branches” – BNZ board, 1973; ibid
BNZ closing 40 branches-many in small towns, RNZ (2020)
It took the Rowling Victimhood Culture of the early 1970s to undo this institution. Perhaps an Honour Culture time period in New Zealand will bring it back?
In the early 2020s, a time of Victimhood Culture and Slave Culture, banks solved their security problem by simply closing their branches en mass. Some of the older generations were left high and dry by this because they were not the ones substituting in-person banking with online banking. In doing so the banks also joined the trend of switching out people for robots which has been a common response during a time when workers and customers are expensive, litigious, and unskilled. For all of these reasons, running banking from a centralised call centre using a customer’s digital paper trail is easier for the bank.
What entrepreneurs in the past used to be able to do when they wanted to expand but the bank wouldn’t lend to them was simply to start their own local branch of a bank. Then, they could lend to themselves! That kept banking honest, competition and entry costs high because anyone could join the profession. Since local branches are no longer feasible to create and are being shut down to be replaced by centralisation the bank entrepreneur is shut out from the old pathway to wealth. Credit is, thus, concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer who become more and more powerful and exclusive.
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