The onslaught released on European financial institutions by the US since the 2008 global banking crisis has raised more than a few eyebrows.
The latest institution to fall in to the trap, according to reports, is the French bank BNP Paribas, which, if these reports are true, faces a record-breaking fine for breaching US law against trading with Iran, Cuba and Sudan.
To many observers, it looks increasingly as if US regulators are using European banks as easy pickings, imposing extortionately punitive fines, while at the same time US-based banks seem to be escaping relatively lightly.
It also looks as if they are caught in the middle of a gladiatorial battle between the competing city, state and federal regulators.
If ever there were a case for the EU to intervene, not only in terms of the apparent victimisation of European financial bodies, but also to clarify the ever-expanding extra-territorial financial regulation, this is it.
The US has recently introduced a body of legislation that sees it stretching its arm beyond the old idea of the nation-state. It has now reached such a level that even small financial advisers with clients who just happen to be US taxpayers must now take care that they, too, are not caught in the far-reaching tentacles of the US justice system.
The suggestion that if a financial firm trades in the dollar it somehow must answer to US justice is untenable.
After all, the US dollar is not just the leading (only?) global reserve currency, with all major commodities trading in dollars, but it is in fact the currency used by many nations, such as Ecuador.
Further, in a global financial market of increasing complexity, no single nation should have such sweeping powers over the rest of the democratic world.
True, the old Westphalian concept of the nation-state has been superseded by international and regional bodies of far greater importance, from the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation, to the European Union and ASEAN.
But with this growth must come new rules and forms of arbitration; the continuing US Supreme Court case involving Argentina is but another example of this.
Fine banks for their bad behaviour, but at least be fair.
