At 06:39 PM 8/18/00 -0400, Chris Mattern wrote:
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No, I don't think so. I will freely admit to having no direct
knowledge, and will gladly give way to someone with better information,
but it is my understanding that checks are rare in Japan (and direct
deposit unknown) and most people who work for a salary do indeed get
paid in cash on payday as a matter of course.
Chris Mattern
Actually, Chris, Swiss banks have branches in almost every
major city in the world. These include London, New York, Chicago,
Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Tokyo, Sydney, Bombay, Berlin, Paris,
and Rome. (This tends to bother the local goverments, and their
tax collectors, to no end)
By setting up a numbered Swiss account, money can be deposited
and/or withdrawn without any of the usual forms of ID. Passwords
are often used, or passphrases. With some accounts, ANYONE can
withdraw money, merely by presenting the proper passphrase at the
office of the bank.
You can find more information on this by contacting any
of the branch offices of any Swiss bank and asking for general
details of their banking laws and practices. They do this quite
often for authors who need to get things correctly in a novel.
This means, of course, that in a world where magical girls
run around in masks and secret identities, there is a way for
money to be paid to, or paid from, such girls.
Checks would always be a problem, of course, but the swiss
accounts get around that quite nicely.
Oddly enough, given that someone mentioned the Spiderman
episode where Peter Parker tried to cash a check in costume, I
had a chance to discuss this with the famous Stan Lee of Marvel
Comics fame when he happened to visit Colorado Springs.
When Swiss accounts were brought up, he agreed that such
would be an ideal way for superheroes (and superheroines) to handle
cash. But that they had brushed that idea aside because it would
have interfered with the way they wanted that issue to go.
(After all, if Spiderman COULD have made big bucks in costume, he
wouldn't have started in being a hero, no?)
So, all in all, Sailor V _could_ make money vanish into
the maze of Swiss banking. Her only serious problems would have
been her age, and I suspect that the disguise function of the
henshin wands could deal with that nicely.
Hope this helps you out.
Ed Becerra.
PS. And yes, I'm back. I've recovered somewhat from my
recent Transient Ischemic Attack, also known as a pin-point
stroke. And let me tell you, typing one-handed is a bitch.
And being full of blood-thinning, anti-clotting drugs isn't
much fun either. It tends to make shaving something of an
adventure, as even a simple shaving nick just doesn't want to
stop bleeding.
Heh.
Anyway, hope this helps. Take care, all.
Ed.
"Dreamers may die, but the Dream is eternal..."