U.S. regulators irate at NY action against Standard Chartered

Yes, laundering money for Iran is the headline, but the subtext is the cozy relationship between London and Washington is about to get icy.  The Olympic spirit lasted all of two weeks, as the sharks are now devouring other sharks.

The other subtext is US regulators are angry at New York regulators for doing their jobs, while the New York regulators are angry at the Fed and US Treasury for not doing theirs.

And caught in the middle is poor ol' Timmy Geithner, now US Treasury Secretary--and former New York Fed President.  He's barely recovering for his non-action during the LIBOR scandal, and now he is getting heat from all sides.

This finger-pointing exercise would be comedic if it wasn't so tragic to American consumers, whose purchasing power is being robbed blindly by the incessant manipulation of markets by the central planners.  My takeaway message?  They're all corrupt sociopaths, and their day of reckoning is rapidly approaching.  The current theater is amusing only because they are exposing each other.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/10/us-standardchartered-iran-idUSBRE87911820120810

I think it's a concerted effort that's been organized at the top of the U.S. government. I think this is Washington trying to win a commercial battle to have trading from London shifted to New York," said John Mann, a member of parliament's finance committee who also called for a parliamentary inquiry.

Mann, from the center-left Labor party, has become a public scourge of London bankers' greed and immorality during the financial crisis. But he told Reuters he saw "anti-British bias" behind "disproportionate publicity that's given to British banking problems as opposed to American banking problems".

A British executive at an institution which ranks among the top 25 shareholders in Standard Chartered saw, like Mann, a politically motivated move by U.S. officials irked by the major role London plays in the global financial industry, attracted big investments from major U.S. banks like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

"Are we starting to see an anti-London bias in U.S. regulatory activities?" the executive asked. "Oh yes. Is there any subtle form of banking sector protectionism going on? Yes."