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This old gem: How Americans living abroad can no longer get banking services!

 Several years ago, actually shortly after 9/11 (so almost 20 years ago now) the US passed a law that forced additional discloser of operations when Americans were depositors in your financing institution.  In effect, America imposed its rules on banks in other jurisdictions.

The intent had been to make it harder for terrorists to finance their activities -- and it worked, almost overnight the armed conflict in Ireland came to an end, as its massive "guilt" funding dried up from the US (there were other causes to -- but timing in life is everything).

One impact has been to massively increase compliance costs for foreign banks -- their solution was simple -- if you are an American citizen your business is no longer welcomed!  What's interesting here is this occurred in 2002/03 and therefore Americans living abroad have found ways around the problem -- certain who were American because they were born there -- and had no further interest in the country simply could terminate their citizenship -- a relatively simple (not cheap) process, especially for those who have had zero contact with America )strictly speaking they should also have filed US income taxes...another issue

In a nutshell, these "Americans" have had almost 15 years to fix the problem (the simplest was to give up American citizenship) so to read this article a Coffee shop in Paris will soon have to shut down because the owner can no longer bank with a French bank -- over the 15 years this person could have (a) given up his/her American passport or (b) open a bank account in an American bank based in Paris (there are several branches there).  15 years to get that done!  

It would seem that the foreign banks bent backwards for this customer, and still he/she complained

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