Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – Financial Services Annex

https://www.wikileaks.org/tisa-financial/

by jamesbritt • 12 years ago

152 51 12 years ago

javert3• 12 years ago

proponents of TISA aim to further deregulate global financial services markets.

But...

The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules which would assist the expansion of financial multi-nationals – mainly headquartered in New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt

These multi-nationals are purely a product of regulaiton (in this case, more specifically, regulatory capture). Without regulation, there would be thousands of healthy medium-size banks in the US, as there apparently used to be.

Overall, to characterize this as "deregulation" is completely sloppy thinking. We are never going to get a better situation when people think sloppily like this. To do so is, in practice, a moral crime. It supports maintaining the status quo through confusion.

jamesbritt• 12 years ago

Well put.

A problem with "deregulation" is that unless all regulations are being removed it's hard to tell what the new state of regulation will be.

There are some regulations that offer privileges, then other regulations that constrain those privileges.

Removing only the latter and calling it "deregulation" creates the impression that things will be more open or equal while doing the opposite.

justsee4• 12 years ago

A problem with "deregulation" is that unless all regulations are being removed it's hard to tell what the new state of regulation will be.

Yes it appears to be a fatal problem, considering an area with no regulations whatsoever is simply called 'lawless'.

justsee4• 12 years ago

But...

International rules that enforce a reduction in national rules (deregulation) which will empower multi-nationals is not the contradiction you appear to think it is.

These multi-nationals are purely a product of regulaiton (in this case, more specifically, regulatory capture).

Well they're purely a product of regulation only in the broadest sense: without regulations (rules and laws) you wouldn't have international trade, and so there would be no multi-nationals (or civilized societies).

Your more specific case ('regulatory capture') is an example of weakened regulation through infiltration / corruption so your statement appears to read: Multinationals are a purely a product of regulation (more specifically, weakened regulation).

Without regulation, there would be thousands of healthy medium-size banks in the US, as there apparently used to be.

What do you mean by 'Without regulation'? If taken literally it would be impossible to define what a 'bank' is, so I assume your definition of 'Without regulation' involves regulations - which makes for a very confusing definition.

You imply there is an optimal outcome (thousands of medium-sized banks) being suppressed through regulation. What regulations force all banks to move quickly to a few larger banks? Usually these sorts of market regulations are about stopping that practice: for instance in Australia there is a 'four pillars policy' which stops mergers of the four largest banks. Without this regulation there would be less competition.

Overall, to characterize this as "deregulation" is completely sloppy thinking. We are never going to get a better situation when people think sloppily like this. To do so is, in practice, a moral crime. It supports maintaining the status quo through confusion.

Characterising deregulation as deregulation is sloppy thinking? Let's back up: there is an international agreement which aims to enforce further deregulation of nation states... and characterising this as deregulation is sloppy thinking?

javert3• 12 years ago

You are conflating two different and commonly-used meanings of the word "regulation."

In (fairly) common parlance, "regulation" means governmental rules that violate individual sovereignty. For examples, laws like Sarbanes-Oxley. These are laws under which the government initiates force against market participants to try to force a desired outcome.

Proper laws merely protect individual sovereignty. For example, you can't use force against someone, whether physically or through possessing something that violates a contract with them (which is fraud). Only the government can use force, and only in retaliation to protect sovereignty.

The ethical basis for this distinction is that it is in everyone'e self-interest to be protected from the initiaion of force in general, while it is against everyone's self-interest to be vulnerable to the initiaition of force, in general. Thus, regulatory laws are wrong.

P.S. If Australia only have four banks, instead of forty or four hundred, it is because of regulation (in my sense of the word).

nitrogen• 12 years ago

Well they're purely a product of regulation only in the broadest sense: without regulations (rules and laws) you wouldn't have international trade, and so there would be no multi-nationals (or civilized societies).

Has this been demonstrated conclusively? It seems like international trade probably would have come before international law.

Terr_• 12 years ago

Without regulation, there would be thousands of healthy medium-size banks in the US, as there apparently used to be.

Because technological advancements and economic pressures are completely blameless?

Make global communications networks disappear, and you'll get millions of small banks, with no changes in regulation at all...

BrandonMarc2• 12 years ago

Sloppy thinking ... supporting the status quo through confusion ... yep, sounds like the media doing the job they're told to do.

mercurial2• 12 years ago

My understanding that part of what caused the housing bubble crisis in the US was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act by Bill Clinton. Besides, I suppose that governments, if they took their responsibility, could break up large, "too big to fail", banks, in the same way that Bell was.

I'm not sure why you think that an industry with so many instances of irresponsibility and dishonesty is fit to essentially govern itself more through deregulation.

beedogs• 12 years ago

GLB was signed by Clinton, but it was sent to his desk with a veto-proof majority. Destroying the American banking system was a bipartisan effort in stupidity.

lifeisstillgood3• 12 years ago

Secret agreements are automatically suspect but this seems like more of the same rather than a change in direction.

This is partly a result of the move to multi-lateral trade talks (bad idea but when WTO rounds take a decade it's not unexpected), and partly inertia - there is little common agreement on how to prevent the next crash, so without a better idea we seem to follow the inverse of Einsteins quip - "the definition of insanity is repeating the last mistakes but hoping for a different outcome

Minor thought : this leak is still a pretty big deal. But it feels like wikileaks is the wrong place for this - like the main media organisations should have already got their investigatory acts together and made wiki leaks irrelevant.

Just wondering ...

rosser• 12 years ago

...like the main media organisations should have already got their investigatory acts together and made wiki leaks irrelevant.

On the whole, the "main media organizations" are an entrenched part of the system they'd need to be reporting on in order to do that job. That's a pretty major "biting the hand that feeds them" sort of impediment.

mathattack• 12 years ago

There's also not a market for things that are hard to explain like multilateral trade agreements.

It's much easier to shout, "It was Bush's fault!" or "But what about Benghazi?"

crdoconnor4• 12 years ago

Minor thought : this leak is still a pretty big deal. But it feels like wikileaks is the wrong place for this - like the main media organisations should have already got their investigatory acts together and made wiki leaks irrelevant.

Wall Street and the mainstream media go hand in hand. That is why this would never have been leaked by them, and why they won't give it anything except the most cursory reporting now it is leaked.

If you're waiting for them to get their investigatory acts together you'll be waiting forever. Wikileaks exists because they refuse to.

lifeisstillgood3• 12 years ago

I think there are very few conspiracies, just confluences of self-interests. Newspapers are dying, but their original need - to publish what was originally hidden, to shine a light on government, still exists and seems to be well served by the Wikileaks core of true anonymity - and so faced with destruction I would expect some newspapers to morph into Wikileaks with a two hundred year track record.

I am seeing this in WaPo and Guardian and maybe al-jazera

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

It's appearing on Wikileaks because nobody else has written about it about it or has any intention of writing about it.

e12e• 12 years ago

Minor thought : this leak is still a pretty big deal. But it feels like wikileaks is the wrong place for this - like the main media organisations should have already got their investigatory acts together and made wiki leaks irrelevant.
Just wondering ...

Funny you should mention that today:

http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/06/21/bbc-and-press-ignor...

cb3• 12 years ago

Who are the people negotiating and agreeing to these 'agreements'(this, ACTA, etc) and what could their justification for keeping them secret possibly be?

wodenokoto• 12 years ago

Elected government officials from democratic countries and non-elected from non-democratic countries together. This is decided by politicians or bureaucrats representing government. I believe advisors from universities, think tanks and businesses are invited to speak.

Why they keep it secret, I don't know.

gorhill2• 12 years ago

Elected government officials from democratic countries

Such secrecy is incompatible with democracy, why refer to some of the countries participating in this as "democratic"?

w_t_payne• 12 years ago

Apart from the secrecy yadda yadda yadda ... is there anything in the content that might be of concern?

crdoconnor4• 12 years ago

Plenty. It's very clearly intended to restrict the exact kinds of regulations that national governments would put into effect to clamp down on too big to fail institutions.

The kind that required humungous bailouts and are STILL taking outsized risks because the regulatory framework is still insufficient to prevent them from causing yet more systemic crises.

Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – Financial Services Annex

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