Banking

Well, appparently a Huntington Bancshares employee happened to find an old box full of checks. The checks included the last known signature of Abraham Lincoln on a check dated April 13, 1865, the day before he died. There were checks by Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson, FDR, and many other famous people. They had been sitting in a vault of a former Union Commerce Bank which had been taken over by Huntington 30 years ago. Not to worry. The checks were put on microfische and we think we can read the copies before the checks were destroyed.

No, I'm kidding. But Huntington was going to sell the old checks off, like so much yard sale garbage. However, the employees put together a display and public outcry led the bank to cancel the sale. I suppose that is because the bank was mystified about the value of the signatures. They never check signatures anymore. Now I'm being sarcastic.

I still am sore about the way the banking industry went paperless. When I got my first set of copied check images, my accountant said, "Where's the backsides? I can't read the checks." There were 18 check images to a page. Was my CPA being picky? He said that in an IRS audit or a court challenge, the first concern is, Is a check available as proof? It must be legible. There is no proof of check-cashing unless the string of endorsers from the backsides are also known and provided as proof. My banker fussed around about how it costs more to put 8 images on a page and would double costs to provide backside images. We persisted. The next month we got a terse letter that said we could have 8 images, front and back for an steep fee. Eventually I wrote a number of letters and the bank compromised to their current 12 images per page.

What happens if you get into a donnybrook with IRS and the courts hold that the bank images are insufficient? I guess you can sue your bank. And the bank will have already concluded that the losses due to such things aren't large enough to sway their policies of destroying and copying checks in small scale. That is exactly what they told me concerning check forgery where they don't check signatures anymore. So it is caveat emptor, buyer beware. Make sure you check your check images. I am happy to report that a more recent check dispute wherein I had to have a better image of my check, the bank had it still stored electronically and could provide an improved copy.

But the attitude reminds me of some of the crazy characters in the oil industry over the years. "Oh heck, just dump that doggone tank battery into the river. It's cheaper to fight the Water Resources Board than to change the way we want to do things." Oh, by the way, FDR only wrote a check for $1.65. That must have been before he got his hands on government. I saw a vehicle that had a license plate on the front that announced, "I got my car from F.D.R." and then in fine print beneath said, "Ford Dealers Ranch". I gather it's a car dealship, but it makes Democrats nostalgic.