US attorney
Readers may detect some animus — a peculiar aversion — on Amwell J’s part to attorney’s of a North American disposition, but really he is quite fond of them, one on one. Individually US attorneys are uncommonly good, decent people, and as long as you don’t get them on the subject of US Regulation or market practice, perfectly agreeable company, especially after a few snifters. It is only when you take them as collective that the prospect palls.
For they — and the institutions that have shaped them and which they comprise — have come up with some of the most confounded gouts of articulated of nonsense ever to don a pair of stilts.
Things like:
- Rehypothecation: The art of giving away something you do not have;
- The impossibility of netting ERISA funds.
- Gross negligence
Cultural imperialism
Now we Brits are hardly ones to throw stones — even we from the former colonies of the antipodes — but US attorneys tend to suppose everyone knows about their jurisdiction, cares about it, is in awe of it, and will have no objection to submitting to it. Every now and then you come across a counterparty in some far-flung backwater (continental Europe, for example) who expresses bafflement or even affrontery at the thought of subjugating itself to the law of the Americans. That this might happen takes some Americans by surprise. Then again, the fact it takes some Americans by surprise, takes everyone else by surprise. It is a fruitless task trying to get the bottom of who is most justifiably surprised but, for the record, it’s us.
See also
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