Apart from the secrecy yadda yadda yadda ... is there anything in the content that might be of concern?
Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – Financial Services Annex
41–50 of 52 posts
Re: Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – Financial Services Annex
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
"the draft has been classified to keep it secret not just during the negotiations but for five years after the TISA enters into force"
I'll believe this is true when I hear it from a second, accountable and reputable source.
At the top right of the document:
"""Declassify on: Five years from entry into force of the TISA agreement or, if no agreement enters into force, five years from the close of the negotiations."""
Re: Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – Financial Services Annex
#43Secret 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 defin…
It's appearing on Wikileaks because nobody else has written about it about it or has any intention of writing about it.
Re: Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – Financial Services Annex
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 it…
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.
Noted. I'm not interested in casting blame, all the more since as a foreigner, I can't really tell the difference between Republican and Democrat economic policies.
Re: Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – Financial Services Annex
#45Secret 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 defin…
> 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...
Re: Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – Financial Services Annex
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
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 i…
It's not a conspiracy any more than the media being 98% fervently pro war in the run up to Iraq was a conspiracy.
It's simply the combination of a dry (but fantastically important) subject and a high likelihood of making powerful enemies by reporting on it.
These things won't stifle reporting on this leak entirely, but they will result in the reporting being significantly muted, conciliatory and perfunctory. E.g. like Krugman's absurd "nothing to see here, move along people" post about TTP: http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/2014/02/tanks-or-cars-why-krug...
Re: Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – Financial Services Annex
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
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 i…
Conspiracies grow out of confluences of self-interest. This is why, for example, felons are prohibited from associating with each other.
Re: Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – Financial Services Annex
#48Apart from the secrecy yadda yadda yadda ... is there anything in the content that might be of concern?
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.
Re: Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – Financial Services Annex
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
"the draft has been classified to keep it secret not just during the negotiations but for five years after the TISA enters into force"
It's the draft that will be secret, not the final agreement. I don't understand why this is so confusing: It's much easier for negotiators to propose a series of concessions and trade-offs in private, knowing that they'll only face political heat for those that actually make it into the final agreement.
It's also much easier for them to propose a series of trade-offs and concessions that primarily benefit their rich donors/friends rather than their electorates.
Re: Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – Financial Services Annex
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Elected government officials from democratic countries Such secrecy is incompatible with democracy, why refer to some of the countries participating in this as "democratic"?
The term "democracy" is kind of a fuzzy and abused word but if we limit its definition to include only the governments run by civilians voted in by fair enough, regularly occurring elections you could do worse. Democracies can have secrets, and in fact must if they want to achieve their interests. I am not sure why this would surprise anyone.
Do the thought experiment. What if there was a mega-Snowden who dumped the whole shebang. Everything.
Would that be an existential threat to the nation and the people? Or would be an embarrassment to the upper echelons of government and military?
Would it be better for the people for such an event to happen, or worse?