Yesterday, the Guardian Newspaper in the U.K. broke the story that a gigantic money-laundering operation, dubbed the ‘ Global Laundromat ’ had included a number of leading banks, amongst which was HSBC. This short post will look at how the mentioning of money laundering is becoming almost analogous with the mentioning of HSBC and that, ultimately, the bank is in danger of facing the greatest threat that a bank can face - an irreversible loss of its reputation. HSBC has a long association with facilitating the illegal flow of money, either from illegal sources or via tax evasion. In 2010, the bank was ordered by the Federal Reserve to improve its money laundering procedures . Then, as was discussed in a previous post in Financial Regulation Matters , the bank was fined $1.9 billion in 2012 by U.S. authorities for ‘exposing the U.S. financial system to money laundering’. This was predicated upon a damning investigation led by Senator Levin of the U.S. Senate, that systematical...