OBAMA: WHY DO WE NEED THE TTIP? TO KEEP BANKS FROM BEING SUED, ...
I have not commented much on the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership treaty - which one reader of this site suggestively calls the Truly Terrible Investment Plan - that the USSA has been attempting to ram down Europe's throat, but when I saw this Zero Hedge article shared by Ms. K.M., I knew I had to. Here's the article:
Obama: TTIP NEcessary to Protect Megabanks from Prosecution
Here's the crux of the argument:
On May 7th, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, or German Economic News, headlined, "USA planen mit TTIP Frontal-Angriff auf Gerichte in Europa” or “U.S. Plans Frontal Attack on Europe’s Courts via TTIP,” and reported that, “America’s urgency to sign TTIP with Europe has solid reason: Megabanks must protect themselves from claims by European investors who allege that they were cheated during the debt crisis. … The U.S. Ambassador to Italy has now let the cat out of the bag on this — probably unintentionally.”
...
The Obama Administration (through its Italian Ambassador) seems thus to be saying, in effect, that unless TTIP is passed into law, Europe’s megabanks (and the U.S. bond-rating agencies, S&P, Moody’s and Fitch) will be able successfully to be sued by cheated investors, just as has been happening with such American banks as JPMorgan/Chase and Goldman Sachs in the United States, which — since TTIP hasn’t yet been in force anywhere, including in the U.S. — were forced to pay billions to cheated investors. Apparently, Obama would be happier if those suits had been impossible in the U.S. The argument here, though only implicitly, seems to be that TTIP is the way to protect megabanks and the bond-rating firms. It concerns specifically the selling of sophisticated derivative investments.
And here's the clincher for the TTIP:
Under TTIP, a megabank fined this way might in turn sue the nation’s taxpayers to restore the megabank’s ensuing loss of profits. If the cheated investors win, taxpayers might thus end up bearing the cheated investors' losses. Under TTIP, the fined company would be arguing that the law under which it had been fined is in violation of TTIP and thus constitutes a violation of that treaty, so that the violating government is obliged to be paying the fine — the law against fraud would itself be violating the fined company’s rights. If the three-arbitrator TTIP panel rules in the megabank’s favor, the government would need to pay the fine it had assessed against the bank, and no appeals court exists for any of these arbitration-panels’ rulings — these rulings are final. Obama and other proponents of that system, which is called ISDS for Investor State Dispute Settlement, say that it’s a more efficient way of handling such disputes. In international commercial affairs, it not only eliminates appeals courts, it gradually eliminates democracy, by fining the government into ultimate submission to these three-person panels of international-corporate-accountable arbitrators.
In effect, what the TTIP really means is a complete surrender of national sovereignty to a cabal of crooked and corrupt banks that are themselves responsible for the financial mess. When a bank and its board and policies cannot be held accountable and liable for their crimes, or the damage they have caused to ordinary people, then in effect, the TTIP is creating a two-tiered society, with two sets of laws, one for the lawless super-rich, and another for everyone else. And of course, under such a system, no financial system is sound, and commerce halts. Note also that there is no genuine process of appeals under the TTIP: everything is handled, not by courts, but by specialliy appointed "experts" and councils of arbitage, with no appeal. This is, in short, not a justice system, it's a simple scheme to further entrench a system of fraud, and criminality. Nor is it a financial system. If fraud cannot be punished under systems of jurisprudence that have emerged over the careful centuries of the development of western cicilization, if a certain class is to be insulated from responsiblility and accountability for their actions and criminality, and if in turn they are the ones running the financial system, then no one is safe.
And people wonder why the west's electorate is turning against party establishments.
See you on the flip side...
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What is the point of publishing what they’ve done all along?
Now it gets a nice sounding name and a legal code to justify what they’ve done all along?
Why bring it out in the open?
Why provide one big all encompassing rationalization of all their crime?
Is this going to be any more profitable or sustainable than their barely covert criminality to date?
What’s the point?
Are they trying to insult the willfully blind into reaction?
What are non-legacy folk like us to do about this institutionalized great gatsby era?
And the one treaty currently under negotiation that hardly ever gets a mention is TISA, the Trade in Services Agreement.
This is the mother of all treaties that puts TTIP and TPP in the shade.
And perhaps THIS is the treaty that is really the goal. If TTIP and/or TPP fail to get through, then TISA is the one that silently – and unopposed – sails through.
The TTIP/TPP may be nothing but a distraction for the TISA.
BetelgeuseT-1, I hadn’t heard of TiSA. Thanks! Sounds very scary:
https://newrepublic.com/article/121967/whats-really-going-trade-services-agreement
“That’s perhaps TiSA’s real goal — to pry open markets, deregulate and privatize services worldwide, even among emerging nations with no input into the agreement. U.S. corporations may benefit from such a structure, as the Chamber of Commerce suggests, but the impact on workers and citizens in America and across the globe is far less clear. Social, cultural, and even public health goals would be sidelined in favor of a regime that puts corporate profits first. It effectively nullifies the role of democratic governments to operate in the best interest of their constituents.”
“Though the outline for this agreement has been in place for nearly a year, these documents were supposed to remain classified for five years after being signed, an example of the secrecy surrounding the agreement, which outstrips even the TPP.”
“Your comment is awaiting moderation.” goshawks – May 21, 2016 at 2:48 am.
newrepublic dot com/article/121967/whats-really-going-trade-services-agreement
I tend to look for ‘pressure points’. In legal matters, this corresponds to the “You Shall Not Pass” points, i.e., the judges (or equivalents).
In TTIP, the ‘judges’ are private ‘experts’ appointed by shadowy private figures. (Think of the Warren Commission or the 9/11 Commission. Who really picked the participants?) So, almost by definition, they are ‘owned’ by the high-finance camp (or the Powers behind them). To expect Justice out of these sham ‘courtrooms’ is the highest folly…
And ‘no appeal’ is the icing on the cake…
Yet another step towards a global, Fascist totalitarian police state.
No standing works well, too.
https://ellenbrown.com/2015/04/24/the-trans-pacific-partnership-and-the-death-of-the-republic/
The TTIP is just the TPP on the Atlantic side of the pond.
Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel.
It is interesting Robert that the Pacific pact is the TPP Trans Pacific Partnership. Then why is the Atlantic pact not refer to as the TAP Trans Atlantic Partnership.
Marcos,
Yes indeed!
We know that whatever they call it; they’ll be singing, and tap dancing with elaborate charades around the real issues. They’ll be parading a consistent high-end rebranding campaign of B.S. in explaining TTP/TTIP through mass mainstream corporate entertainment, so-called news outlets[much like their namesake’s: shopping outlets]. They’ll be flubbing the everything’s roses TPP/TTIP forecasts/subdivided by Twitter into news vibrato, buzzing & humming with nothing but goods news of TTP/TTIP.
if these expert political observers – and political participants on tactical sabbaticals – had started out as Las Vegas bookies, most would be working as fry cooks by now in Fresno[my apologies to any fry cooks reading this].
My comment at 10:41 Pm was lo-bot-omized to the memory hole.
Expect many comments to be cast-out on this subject matter.
Very sensitive to the Empire’s heart.
Welcome everybody to Overworld Organized Crime it’s even worse than Underworld Organized Crime. At least with the later we know they’re criminals and they live in something that looks like the real World. The only that would describe this is called HELL it not even sustainable in the long run what are these fools smoking.
Marcos
Used your four-letter word above;
below in my reply to Chris.
..trying like ___, to live-free again.
[put in memory hole]
The TPP/TTIP are Transnational Empire’s Globalized Constitutions usurping Nation-States Constitutions.
This new form of empire goals are: the elimination of the nation-states; the elimination of liberty; the elimination of rights.
This Transnational Empire is being run by international banks.
An instrument designed to become a Fascist’s wet dream…
come true?
This is not fascism though, it’s corporatism. At least in fascism the nation state owns the banks and Corporations, not the other way around.
Chris,
You absolutely correct!
Scholar, Sheldon S. Wolin termed this phenomenon: Inverted Totalitarianism; because of the new available technologies of control, intimidation, and mass manipulation it far surpasses those of earlier fascist times. It projects power inwards; exploits the authority and resources of the state – most notably by encouraging a symbiotic relationship between traditional government and the system of Private Governance represented by the transnational corporations. The coming-of-age of corporate power, cutting out any public strings/red-tape of accountability. Corporate power & Government power newly fashioned from the same cloth of self-interst.
With TPP/TTIP the public at large become virtually exterminated by these instruments; nothing no but pesky public/pests trapped on sticky pest/public TPP/TTIP Transnational treaty/agreement papers – trying like…
…hell,
to live-free again.
Catherine Austin Fitts, Solari.com, interviewed Helen Chaitman this week who has written “JP Madoff: The Unholy Alliance Between America’s Biggest Bank and America’s Biggest Crook”. If you are not a member of Solari.com, I recommend that you buy this book to see just how corrupt JP Morgan Chase really is… and if you have ANY financial dealings with them, get out before it is too late! TTIP is literally the tip of the iceberg as not only big banks, but all big corporations will be without responsibility for fraud or liability of any kind. You will be unable to sue the federal government, the biggest corporation of all.
“CORPORATE FASCISM AT ITS BEST!!”