The Irritating US

Without demonstrating any extreme nationalism, a French person can be surprised by the $10 billion fine with which Attorney General Eric Holder has threatened BNP Paribas because of U.S. dollar transactions with countries that break American sanctions. Certainly, the Geneva branch of the bank has obfuscated transparency. However, by wanting to impose its national diplomacy on any kind of use of its currency — which itself is international — the U.S. runs the risk of irritating operators around the world.

The approach of the American midterm elections, where we are going to accuse Obama of indulging the financial sector, and where it will be important to prove otherwise, can explain, it seems, the prosecutor’s vindictiveness. But this explanation is too simple for such a major stake. American politicians have continued this indulgence, which will eventually end up disqualifying the status of their currency. As for the amount of the fine, it is a bit lower than the $13 billion once demanded of JP Morgan, one of the major banks responsible for the historic “subprime” crisis that disrupted the entire world.

At the same time and on another front, that of Euro-American international trade, the great trans-Atlantic negotiation presents another legal uncertainty under the paradoxical pretext of normalizing trade. Besides customs duties, where the low rates lower the stakes, the two other points of negotiation are full of misunderstandings and disputes, which is good news for lawyers.

This is the case with the standards — health, security, social, environmental — that allow for the protectionism in which America excels. And the picturesque idea of keeping legal disputes between the U.S. and businesses as purely private arbitrations is a thinly veiled attempt to question the (non-American) government sovereignty against the (generally American) business interests — all of this while greatly propping up (American) law firms, whose parasitism complements that of finance.

The Americans definitely need to be thoroughly irritated for having become so irritating.