I’ve just learned that ‘handle’ can also mean ‘turnover’ as this sentence from Ozark shows:
Our handle’s about to go up a million dollars a month.
Never heard of that one. I think some of those business types just make stuff up as they go along.
Anyone remember buzzword BINGO?
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Here is some context:
Wendy: Anita, I hope you’re calling with good news.
Anita: Well, I guess that depends on your perspective.
Wendy: I don’t understand.
Anita: Seems our rivals have gone and set themselves on fire. It’s gonna be months before they can reopen. So… we’re gonna be able to get that bank loan and upgrade. We’re backing out of the deal.
Wendy: You can’t do that.
Anita: But I am. Our handle’s about to go up a million dollars a month.
Wendy: But we had an agreement. A verbal agreement. ( stammers ) Anita, where is this coming from? This isn’t you.
Anita: Oh, please. Don’t pretend we had a relationship.
What is Ozark? Is that a TV show?
Anyway, I don’t really understand what it means by the context.
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Yes, Ozark is one of the most successful series on Netflix ever:
Interestingly enough, I do understand what ‘handle’ means in this context because to me it’s clear that she is talking about how much money they are handling each month.
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I not only don’t have Netflix, I don’t have a TV at all.
That conversation might just be Hollywood writers and has nothing to do with reality.
Lake of the Ozarks. I’ve vacationed there a few times. Did a lot of water skiing there. It’s a nice area, or at least it used to be. I was there in the early 70s, so it’s built up considerably since then.
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Handle is a common term, both noun and verb, in the gambling industry. The total amount of money wagered.
I saw the first two seasons of Ozark, but didn’t continue after its 2 year hiatus.
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How did you like Ozark and how much do you know about the gambling industry and money laundering? I mean, it’s a huge business, especially here in Germany where there is no cap on cash transactions and many of Putin’s thugs have bought real estate in Berlin and other German cities.
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All I know is what I’ve seen in movies.
In the US, cash transactions greater than $10,000 must be reported. I believe this drives the search for businesses that can justify large amounts of cash in Ozark.
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I have a friend who works at a bank in Europe. Her job is to look for suspicious activity and investigate it. She’s on a large team (around 25 people comes to mind ), and that’s all they do.
My understanding is that the bank can get in trouble if they don’t make at least some effort to stop laundering or other illegal activity. Or maybe another way of looking at it, the bank can be accused of being a party to the illegal activity. If there is something fishy going on, the bank can’t claim ignorance unless they use due diligence. If they make some effort to find illegal activity, then they can say “Hey, here is what we did.”
Apparently they get a lot of false alarms. Like I was told about one case where a guy withdrew a million Euros cash from his account with no explanation. After researching the case it turned out that the guy got tired of negative interest rates and pulled all his money and kept it in cash.
I’m not sure if the banks are legally liable or not. They might put in all that effort just to cover their ass.
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