The American way

It is a paradox that the nation most committed to free enterprise — the United States — can be one of the most aggressively protectionist countries on earth. The accusations made this week by the New York State Department of Financial Services against Standard Chartered Bank are serious and deserve investigation, as were those made by the US Senate against HSBC a fortnight ago. It may turn out that both banks are guilty of serious failings, but there is no mistaking the relish with which the Americans are beating up on the Brits.

They shouldn’t be too quick to point the finger. Gordon Brown’s much-ridiculed refrain about the economic crisis, ‘it started in America’, had a degree of truth. A financial bubble had inflated across the world, but the pin that pricked it was the American subprime market. The federal government had colluded with banks to offer dangerously cheap loans, while good and bad debts were parcelled up together and sold to unsuspecting investors.