"It's a pre-emptive cringe in the face of American regulation," says a senior executive at a big bank. His firm, along with most of its peers, is rapidly culling banking relationships and retreating wholesale from markets, countries and lines of business that might attract the ire of regulators or prosecutors. So widespread is the practice that there is now an accepted term for it: "derisking". It is fraying the network of relationships that tie the global financial system together, driving up the costs of finance for poor countries and people.
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