We learnt last Tuesday that the fifth largest British bank, Standard Chartered, had promised the New
York State regulator that it would pay a fine of 340 million Dollars for
illegal transactions with Iran. The matter is not yet closed, as four other
American regulatory bodies continue to pursue their enquiries on this subject.
There was a danger that the affair, dating back to last week, would get
bogged down, and it had already started to poison relations between British and
American financial authorities ( to which I alluded in my article on the 12th
August: The Goldman Sachs Affair: Corrupted
Justice, or an Untouchable Financial Sector? )
What is causing this sudden urgency on the part of Standard Chartered? Its image in the eyes of the public!
Similarly, on Tuesday, a Financial Times article informed us that a wide array of banks: the German Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and the Austrian Volksbanken have stopped selling products to their clients
which speculate on food commodities. Not - they chant in unison - because
speculation has an impact on prices (“ALL research proves the contrary!”), but
because the poorly informed perception of the public leads them to
imagine all sorts of underhand goings-on, and this need to be taken into
consideration.
Once again: an image problem.
What does all this prove? That ‘poorly-informed’ public opinion is starting
to make waves and to have some effect.
I read all this
yesterday during the brief pause for Assumption, and it made me want to get up
early this morning and talk to you about it: after all, it is not every day
that the financial world offers us some crumbs for comfort!!...and in
particular that our unceasing efforts to contribute our penny’s worth of
malicious gossip to “the badly informed public perception” is at least starting
to bear some fruit
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