British banking giant Standard Chartered plc has been accused of collaborating with the Iranian government to launder $250 billion between 2001 and 2007. The accusations are a “stunning move” by Benjamin Lawsky, head of the recently created New York banking regulator, and have angered much of the financial community by making public a shameful allegation that in the past would have been dealt with quietly.

Standard Chartered plc vehemently denies the allegations and insists that nearly all of its transactions were aboveboard (admitting that maybe some $14 million was not). Regardless of who is correct, the damage has been done. Following the announcement, Standard Chartered’s stock took a steep dive, wiping out nearly a quarter of the bank’s stock value, before partially rebounding later in the day.

More importantly, however, these allegations are another major smear on the British banking system. Confidence and trust in the American and British fiscal institutions is being eroded.

This charge against Standard Chartered comes right on the heels of the libor scandal, which may be the biggest con in financial history. The scandal broke when Barclays bank was fined for illegally manipulating the interbank benchmark interest rate. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, libor is “the most critical global benchmark for short-term interest rates.” The libor rate affects interest rates on everything from credit cards and mortgages to municipal bonds and savings accounts. But now it appears that almost all the big Wall Street banks were colluding to fix libor.

On August 5, cnbc reported that as the labor scandal is unfolding, almost all the big British and American banks are turning on each other in an attempt to show that what other banks were doing was more illegal than their own actions were. JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Royal Bank of Scotland, ubs and others seem to be doing their best to look like the least dirty shirt in the laundry bin.

Since the great subprime mortgage Wall Street meltdown of 2008, the U.S. and British banking industries have been on a downward slope.

The revelations of financial giants like Barclays and Standard Chartered seeking short-term gains through shady dealings highlight the demise of Anglo-Saxon banking dominance. That is how serious these financial scandals are.

Over 60 years ago, Herbert W. Armstrong warned that a calamity in Western financial institutions would trigger the collapse of American and British world dominance. As confidence in American and British banks disappears, so does the chance of either nation pulling out of its current downward economic spiral.