WikiLeaks' latest leaked document is the secret draft text
for the Trade in Services
Agreement (TISA) Financial Services Annex.
TISA is a global trade agreement that covers 50 countries and 68.2% of world
trade in services, according to WikiLeaks.
The organization said in a press release that, "Despite
the failures in financial regulation evident during the 2007-2008 Global
Financial Crisis and calls for improvement of relevant regulatory structures,
proponents of TISA aim for further deregulate global financial services
markets."
Current World Trade Organization parties negotiating TISA include, the
U.S., Japan, Australia, and the European Union's 28 member states.
A preliminary analysis of the leaked financial services
chapter of TISA written for WikiLeaks by Jane Kelsey, a Law Professor at the
University of Auckland in New Zealand, argues that the financial industry has
captured global rule making.
Kelsey writes that, "TISA is designed for and in close
consultation with the global finance industry, whose greed and recklessness has
been blamed for successive crises and who continue to capture rule making in
global institutions."
Kelsey also argues that the leaked draft shows governments signing on
to TISA will be expected to extend current levels of financial deregulation,
face pressure to authorize potentially toxic insurance products, and risk a
legal challenge if they adopt measures to preventing or responding to another
crisis.
Click here
for the full article in Business Insider.
Related Opinions:
David Cay Johnston,
Aljazeera America
“The draft
agreement WikiLeaks released on June 19…is a model of secret law,
blatant in its disregard for transparency, democratic process and history. Its
opening page says the terms are to remain secret for five years after
negotiations formally end or the proposed new rules take effect…
…It is
impossible to obey a law or know how it affects you when the law is secret. And
that is what this agreement would be, a new rulebook for trade in services —
principally banking, insurance and trusts…
…If this is the first you have heard of this
agreement, it is not surprising. Not one of the five big American newspapers —
The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The
Washington Post and USA Today — wrote a word about the document. Ditto the
major TV networks.
Why the secrecy? Why shut down the
marketplace of ideas?”
Click here
for the full column.
William K. Black, New
Economic Perspectives
“…TISA is awful for honest bankers. Effective financial
regulators are the essential ‘cops on the beat.’ Only [they] have shown the
ability to break the ‘Gresham’s’ dynamic (bad ethics drives good ethics out of
the markets and professions) that fraudulent CEOs create. When we break that
dynamic we make it possible for honest bankers to prevail. TISA is good for
only one group – dishonest bank executives…
…That brings us back
to the reason the bank CEOs have demanded that TISA be ‘classified’ and kept
from the public and even Congress. Indeed, the plan is to classify its
provisions for five years after TISA is adopted…
…Ask yourself this
question: why would the bankers and heads of state have demanded, and received,
‘classified’ treatment of a document that did not have any confidential
information (there are no state secrets, no privacy issues, and nothing of
proprietary value in the leaked TISA draft) [if it] made no meaningful
restriction on regulation and supervision…? The demand for classified treatment
makes it inescapable that the bankers and government officials involved in
drafting TISA are trying to hide something they believe would outrage the
public.”
Click here
for the full column.