Standard Chartered soap opera becomes Yank-Brit row

After the British banking behemoth was accused of, well of plotting, planning and ‘supporting the terrorists’ while the poor old Americans suffered, their riposte has been through a barrage of cursing, exclamation marked with, “Damn You Yanks!”. SCB (Standard Chartered Bank) had ostensibly exposed the US to terrorists by concealing deals worth billions with Iran over the past decade or so – this despite a multitude of sanctions being imposed by Washington on fiscal dealings with Tehran. There are around 600,000 transactions with the Iranian government, worth around $250 billion that SCB has apparently hid from the world, and of course the US is adamant that this ‘treachery’ has struck them the hardest.
After a list of ‘breaches’ that the SC hierarchy was clarified about, their group executive director divulged the bank’s stance on the whole debate when he lashed onto a curse blitzkrieg, which was followed by the question: Who exactly the Americans to tell the rest of the world whether or not they can deal with Iran? That might be a popular question in the current times, but being all defensive and accusing the US of anti-British bias clearly shows that there has been more than something fishy going on in the backdrop of SC’s dealing since 2001.
SC’s dealing with Iran, or lack thereof, is a different debate altogether, but what is undisputed now after this Standard Chartered debacle, is that Washington is now the indubitable regulator of world banking – and not only for the ‘targeted’ nations, but for its own ‘allies’ as well. The US already has full control over global oil markets – another subplot of this SC-Iran-US episode – and now it is pretty much clear that global banking is also a part of the American jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, banking ramifications aside, the whole thing has generated a lot of hullabaloo in the British political circles as well, with accusations of “anti-British bias” being echoed in the UK. The politicians from the UK are asserting that the move is a deliberate ploy on the part of the Americans to target London, which is undoubtedly the financial center of the region.
Anti-British bias, or not, either way the reputation of a renowned global bank has been deteriorated, which is vindicated by the slapdash market activity of Standard Chartered ever since the groundbreaking news broke.