In her attacks on Obama’s pending trade deals, Elizabeth Warren has argued that could undermine US financial regulations like Dodd Frank. The Administration has taken to trying to dismiss Warren as not knowing what she was talking about. More skillful defenders of the traitorous trade deals took the tact of saying that Warren could in theory be right, but the odds of her fears playing out were so remote as to not be worth worrying about.
In a long, careful article in the Nation yesterday, George Zornick explains even with the limited information that we have now about the contents of proposed treaties like the TPP and its ugly European step-sister, the TTIP, Warren’s worries are valid. For instance:
Like with TPP, we don’t know all the details of TTIP yet, but advocates have many fears. One is that the Federal Reserve’s plan to impose separate liquidity requirements on foreign banks might be scotched…
And it’s not just Dodd-Frank: the leaked EU proposal for TTIP has a provision that new regulations first be “analyzed” to determine if they have an unacceptable impact on trade. Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) worries that this could “impose a presumption that regulations must be judged on the basis of their trade impact rather than their effectiveness as public interest policies promoting financial stability.”
Keep in mind that by design, a substantial portion of Dodd Frank implementation was kicked down the road to allow lobbyists to have a second go at weakening it, with studies required before rules would be written. Significant portions of rulemaking have yet to be completed and would appear to be subject to the TTIP analysis requirement, giving the banking industry yet another change to gut legislation.
But an example of Warren’s concerns came out of left field yesterday, as reported by the Wall Street Journal:
A U.S. rule that prohibits banks from taking risky bets with their own money violates the North American Free-Trade Agreement because it bans U.S. banks from trading triple-A-rated Canadian government debt, Canada’s finance minister said Wednesday…
Canadian concerns about the Volcker rule’s treatment of sovereign debt aren’t new. In 2012, Canada joined European countries and Japan in raising concerns about the law’s reach..
Mr. [Joe] Oliver noted that the Volcker rule reflects concerns about the credit standing of some foreign securities. That concern doesn’t apply to Canada, he said, because Canada’s credit rating is better than the U.S. government and U.S. municipalities…
“I believe—with strong legal basis—that this rule violates the terms of the Nafta agreement,” Mr. Oliver told a securities industry audience in New York that included the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Bruce Heyman. “I hope the United States administration sees that changing the Volcker rule is in its own best interests and that of its biggest trading partner.”
Pretending that the only risk of holding foreign securities is credit risk is disingenuous. Foreign bond investors are also subject to currency and interest rate risks. Needless to say, the Treasury Department disagreed firmly with Oliver’s view.
One has to wonder, given that Canada has been unhappy about how the Volcker Rule applied to Canadian government debt since 2012, why the Nafta argument was hauled out at this juncture. Has the negotiation of the TPP led Canada to look at trade treaties more seriously as a way to get its way? Regardless, the fact that Canada thinks it has a strong case for having its bonds exempted from the Volcker Rule looks to be a harbinger of the creative ways these pending, toxic trade deals could be deployed, given their far more sweeping provisions.
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Tried to send something less public, but article needs some proof-reading. Some typos throughout and very awkward sentences in the opening paragraph. Otherwise, thank you for shedding light on this issue.
Regards.
[I] Tried to send something less public, but [the] article needs some proof-reading. Some typos throughout and very awkward sentences in the opening paragraph. [where is the verb?] Otherwise, thank you for shedding light on this issue.
Regards.
otherwise, ¡well done! mr. kettle.
Yes, Warren thinks it could be bad, but not under the saintly rule of Obama Jesus: “WARREN: Well, as Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew has said, that in the negotiations with the Europeans, which will be the next trade deal after this one, there’s been a lot of pressure to try to weaken financial regulations. The former assistant secretary of the treasury, Michael Barr, has made the same point. These are people from the Obama administration. Now, President Obama says, but I won’t do that in a trade deal, and I believe the president. I truly do. The problem is, he’s president for only 18 more months. And the deal that we’re being asked to vote on this week greases the skids for trade deals for six years.”
Why does Warren say she believes this president? I haven’t been able to find examples of Obama keeping his promises that would benefit ordinary Americans. Why now?
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=405950630
That said, the actual specific arguments Warren and many other people are making about this are most certainly accurate.
More generally, why do politicians act as if the current balance of power between the parties is a permanent situation? Many Republicans were fighting to give the president more budget and spying on Americans authority when Bush was president and then suddenly turned a 180 when Obama was elected. ALWAYS think about what a politician from the other party would do with power and authority when you grant it.
Maybe all of Congress (and other rump, lame duck currently-but-not-for-long-now ruling bodies that are on the way to ceremoniously drinking this Kool-aId and forcing it down the rest of our throats too) should be thinking about what the Kleptocorporatocracy would, could and most certainly will do with power and authority when these “rulers,” as the putative “representatives,” here at the end of history being able to confer “legitimacy” via their “votes” on these secret-surprise “agreements,” when they trade away whatever is left of the rights, privileges and immunities of ordinary people, ALL of us, not just nominal “Americans” who have only our present location and domicile in what used to be the sovereign United States as any index of our “citizenship,” any more…
I would love to have Yves or somebody take a crack at drawing a simple stick-figure verbal cartoon of what “trade” actually is. It’s too big for me, but that word, “trade,” is getting a ton of play and its own spurious “legitimacy” (“Trade Gooo-oo-od!”) from lack of critical examination and challenge. “Trade,” after all, and I think as pointed out here, was the tool every empire’s vampire squids have used to suck the life out of distant peoples and what used to be those distant peoples’ fortuitous indigenous “resources.” The British Imperial corporations used “trade” to force opium addiction on China as a way to profit from tea sales, and the original colonists’ Tea Party in Boston Harbor was right out of that prequel-to-NAFTATPPTTIPTISA scenario.
“Trade” is killing us. The f___ers who are forcing it live perfect little Tony Heyward-Tony Blair-and-soon-Barack Hussein Obama immune lives in their various estates and corporate phalluses and mega-yachts and private islands and enclaves scattered in the nicer parts of the planet. Impunity and lack of consequences for them are nearly absolute, hence there are zero negative-feedbacks to in any way move even a little toward homeostatic meta-stability. And now comes this last, pretty much final, fraudulent set of “Agreements” riding a froth of faux “democratic process,” that reduce millennia of usually violent combat between individual and small-group rights, on the one hand, and corporatized theft and greed and oppression and slavery on the other, to a little set of snickeringly secret conversions of sovereignty to f___ing Randian “contractual agreements.” See, once again, for those who missed it before, NCs’ earlier series titled “Journey Into A Libertarian Future,” http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/journey-into-a-libertarian-future-part-i-%E2%80%93the-vision.html
May I ask again how people plugged into the Big World of Big Actors and Big Actions Out There maybe understand how these “Agreements” and their terms and the “judgments” of their Troikas are likely to be enforced, going forward? formerly national armies? militarized police forces? VIchyQuislingism? The smug presumptions from earlier inquiries were just that the organs of the states would just go along, even if it meant death or dispossession of all us “citizens.”
There is a curious zombie vitality to the Second Amendment, as the rest of the Founding Document goes belly-up. One wonders how that will play out…
What makes you think the parties are *actually* competitive, rather than simply sporting for fun and profit? The game is more important than the score, as long as the fans keep paying to get in.
Yes, I agree. Why is the trade fast track for 6 years? Even though someone is good and kind and thoughtful as Obama would never use his powers for evil, he’s still pushing for fast track authority which could fall into the hands of a evil Republican. You’d almost think the two major parties had the same agenda!
Maybe it’s like saying “And Brutus is an honorable man”?
Because she is a politician, and as such can lie with the best of them, and is more concerned with not burning bridges with the powerful than she is with the truth…or she’s just a little naive…hard to say…
As a side note, naïve politicians are as useful to oligarchs as lying ones. They may even be more useful because of their genuine misdirection.
Also, just as elementary school kids can quickly go from naïveté about Santa Claus to joining in the lie, so too can politicians.
Yes, that interview with Judy Woodruff was very interesting. Warren made these points very clearly – that it was a trojan horse – and etc. And beware the TTIP next. When we look at what was said last week about WTO being the leader in deregulating for the benefit of world trade you would think that everyone would know enough by now to understand how long standing this deregulation mind-set is and how determined. Didn’t feel like Judy Woodruff was too anxious to understand the dangers – she was noticeably sour toward Warren.
Also Cspan was interesting yesterday. Wyden must have had a shot of tequilla because he was on a role informing us all that he believed in this trade deal land he was out to make sure it passed. That was followed by a very articulate young senator (R) from Oklahoma. He pointed out just one piece of baloney in the TPP – that there was to be a corporation tax in the 5th year of the treaty, which was to be followed in the 6th year by a full refund. He described it as just more duplicitous nonsense, more or less. If there are giveaways in the TPP like that, no wonder it is all shrouded in secrecy by the corporations. And I guess that refund will be paid for by… us?
Susan,
Agreed. The NPR interviewer’s questions all seemed to revolve around the idea that Warren was making a big deal about trivial matters and that she should admit she’s just grandstanding. It almost got condescending, but it arguably backfired because Warren handled the questions so well.
Like this part:
INSKEEP: Senator Warren, you began by raising the concern about the secrecy of this arrangement. It’s being negotiated in secret. You’re being asked to vote on fast-track authority before a text is made public. Is it true that you’ve had – you as a lawmaker, though, have had more no access to this?
WARREN: On no, I have been able to go to a special, secured room. I can’t take any electronic devices – no computer, no iPhone. I can’t even walk out with paper notes. I can go and read about the agreement, but I cannot come out in public and talk about any of the specifics. The press can’t see it. The public can’t see it. But I will tell you this – there are some folks who’ve seen it. There are 28 working groups that have helped shape the trade deal. And in those 28 working groups, there are more than 500 people. It turns out that 85 percent of them are either corporate executives – senior corporate executives or lobbyists for the industries that are being affected. The way I see this, that’s a tilted process, and a tilted process yields a tilted result.
That’s a brilliant answer. She crushed that question, in my view. It fits in perfectly with her “game is rigged against normal Americans” theme that she’s always hammering on.
The way I see it, the more it’s seen as a personal spat, the more the media will show an interest in covering the story. The more media coverage, the shakier Obama’s strategy of trying to sneak this through becomes untenable.
” I can’t take any electronic devices – no computer, no iPhone. I can’t even walk out with paper notes. I can go and read about the agreement, but I cannot come out in public and talk about any of the specifics.”
Once again, and this is getting tiresome: that is a lie. Under Article I, Sect. 6, Paragraph 1 of the Constitution (the “speech and debate” clause), she and all other members of Congress have absolute immunity from penalty for anything they say on the floor of Congress. Furthermore, she and they cannot be arrested while Congress is in session or while going to or fro.
In other words, she doesn’t have to follow those rules. She isn’t even SUPPOSED to follow those rules. She’s supposed to go on the floor and debate the damn thing, which means quoting it freely. She can carry it out of there and enter it wholesale in the Congressional Record, as Gravel did with the Pentagon Papers, and no one can stop her. What’s some flunky going to do – scuffle with her? (Let alone Wyden, who is well over 6 feet tall). Any attempt to stop them would be an instant constitutional crisis, one tha tis long overdue.
Congress is COLLUDING with the malign secrecy over these trade agreements. They have no excuse whatsoever.
They are Obama’s rules, and they look magnificent.
JohnGL you do realize that other laws and security regulations are in force? They cannot talk about it without being charged under national security violations. Your post is simplistic.
Surely the Constitution overrides any other law or regulation?
You’d think. But….
see The Newsroom season 3 re limits of constitutional protection (for journalists, anyhow).
Judy Woodruff is nothing more or less than a regime supporting whore. She’s paid to parrot the ruling class lies. Its no different with Gwen Awful. Heard that decided piece of crap describing the Yemen situation as a “proxy war” yesterday which is right out of the neo-con playbook. The American people need to organize in a way they haven’t since the labor unrest of the 1930s and take direct action against this kind of tripe. There is simply no other hope.
Americans love inequality. They say they don’t, but they micro-compete and micro-posture as surely and as often as they breathe.
Also, Americans are reenactors. They would much rather live inside their stories, narratives, and faith-based outcomes than act to move past those sad stories and arrange a world in which they are obsolete.
On those two general traits, I don’t think they will do that. Of course, we don’t have to accept the current power and its successors, unlike the “blood of Christ”, “Great Chain of Being” nonsense that monarchies have to deal with, so the option of turning our back on the republic and organizing amongst ourselves is a dangerous, difficult, but effective and not impossible endeavor. Just gotta get more lives, fortunes and sacred honor in one place… and the latter is nearly extinct from public life.
Obomba has failed in absolutely everything else he has attempted, I’d love to see TPP fail and keep his record perfect.
(Imagines a world where Obomba actually INTENDED to do all the the things he talks about in his speechifying, LOL).
Actually he has only really failed on two fronts: foreign policy, and domestic policy. Other than that he’s been pretty good.
False. He has succeeded in everything he’s earnestly attempted — the bank bailout, the health insurance bailout, the surveillance bailout, giving LGBTs full bourgeois status, reliably smacking down whistleblowers, building his own copy of the Akashic records in Utah — and failed at everything for which his [offensive racial word meaning, in this case, supporters or loyalists] will cover without asking inconvenient questions.
As suggested in Gilens and Page 2014, if some policy outcome happens, the oligarchs probably don’t care enough to make the phone call to stop it.
Suggesting that Warren should have called Obama a liar.
Answer: She didn’t have to. Jack Lew and Michael Barr did if for her.
It isn’t merely financial regulations that are at stake, it is the entire facade of sovereignty that is under assault here. This is madness.
°Sigh*.
Warren has gone into open war with Obama, or did you manage to miss that?
but her big allies in opposing the trade deal are Democrats. So she needs to present rationales to them that depersonalize this. As one DC expert said to me at my meetup, “If the media sees the trade fight as Warren versus the president, Warren will lose. No one will support a Senator versus a president on policy.” So it is important for her to make arguments that give air cover to dissenting Democrats.
I believe Ms. Warren meant, but purposely decided not to say: For purposes of this discussion I will stipulate that I do believe this President. The clever law professor did not have to claim to disbelieve the President in order to make her point – so the clever politician decided not to.
I think she means she believes “in” him as she has been helping Obomba since before she was elected Senator. For just 1 instance, there was a unanimous vote in Congress that would have allowed the banks to foreclose with impunity by expanding what was legal by broadening the acceptance of notarizations, ie.. robo-signing. Warren called him and let him know that that would be illegal and so he pocket veto’d it. I think she thinks he wants to do the right thing, but, we all know she’s wrong about that.
We’re due to have an election here in Canada this fall, and our truly terrible government had been trying to tie up a lot of loose ends on their wish list just in case they don’t get reelected. For instance, they just passed the broadest curtailment of civil liberties since the second world war, are trying to get a bill passed creating secret courts for terrorist suspects, are trying to give the RCMP retroactive immunity for destroying records illegally that the government wanted to have destroyed, etc, etc. Joe Oliver in particular just introduced the biggest joke of a budget we’ve seen in a long time – it reaches a surplus largely by authorizing the government to ignore collective bargaining laws and impose substantially weakened sick leave policies on the civil service. I have a feeling they’re just throwing everything they can at the well to see what sticks, because they don’t know when they’ll get a chance to be in charge again.
As a fellow Canadian, I share your concerns Matt. This may brighten your day a bit though. Probably no where near enough, but people are waking up. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/05/14/federal-ndp-poll-mulcair-ekos-liberals-tories_n_7282676.html
My worry with the NDP is that they’ll pull an Obama on us – get voted in with super high hopes and expectations and turn out to be more or less the same. I hope I’m just being jaded and cynical!
The NDP will always be infamous for the “Rae Days” of Ontario.
It’ll all most likely be a moot point if we sign onto the TPP and TISA anyway. Pretty much the end of any aspirations to Government that is representative of the peoples interests.
Any way to extract binding promises from the aspiring younger
ClintonTrudeau under your system? If not, that might be something y’all should demand of the NDP — to be introduced immediately, in fact. If they want to buy your vote, it’s cash on the barrel head.like i said before, we have the regressive self-servatives, the neoliberals and the neoneoliberals.
let’s go to the mall!
Canadians should hand the politicians a minority government, of just the right balance, so they spend all their time fighting each other. It is better to handcuff them, than let them loose passing laws like Bill C51 which was done in the blink of an eye. And no, the NDP wouldn’t be any better.
You are not being cynical enough. Look at what just happened in Ontario.
“Why does Warren say she believes this president? ”
Because, she’s trying to play nice. She’s not calling him a liar, and he’s not calling her a bitch. Publicly.
ptup,
I don’t think that’s the reason. Warren has always been a team player for Obama. She praised the Consumer Bureau when she knew full well it had important flaws. This isn’t an aberration in her behavior. It’s consistent.
For my part, I appreciate her speaking out on the specifics. I just dislike being propagandized. First, many people, not just Warren, are speaking against the TPP. They are as eloquent and savvy as she is. They also don’t give Obama a free pass. Giving Obama the free pass on torture, murder and financial crimes has been a real problem in the Democratic party. Jim A. is correct to point out that Republicans gave Bush that same free pass with equally disastrous consequences.
My guess is that Warren would rather convince people, especially Obama loyalist types, that he’s just making a mistake. That’s a much easier sell than “the President you’ve defended/loved for years is actually a corrupt, lying piece of garbage who is telling you the sky is green with a straight face”.
If she attacks him, she comes across as mean-spirited and bitter (which is what he’s actually doing).
Plus, she’s a very courteous, polite woman. It’s rare to see her call someone names or degrade someone, and it’s part of her appeal.
I dunno, I kinda liked it better when she threatened to knock Timmy’s teeth out.
Warren regularly employs, “Damning with faint praise…”
Agreed. Obama overtly accused Warren of lying. I think in this particular indecent her not-so-subtle over-emphasis of the President’s honesty is very tongue in cheek. But clever, because it does have the effect of protecting herself from the charge of attacking Obama while at the same time actually raising the question of Obama’s integrity in the matter. Warren = reasonable; Obama = unhinged.
Please see my comment above. You don’t get, on a basic level, what the game is.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/05/elizabeth-warrens-trade-deal-fears-confirmed-canada-uses-nafta-to-challenge-volcker-rule.html#comment-2443979
Warren is one of 100 senators and in the party that is not in control of the legislature. That means she has, even more so than she would otherwise, to move in a manner to get as many allies in her party as possible. A Senator has to go along to get along a lot of the time to get ANYTHING done at all on their pet issues. And that’s even more true given the minority position of the Democrats.
I voted for Obama in 08′ but having seen his actions as president I have no problem seeing him behind bars for twenty years or so. How many children in South Asia and the ME have been blown apart or incinerated on the the orders of Obama?
I’m in Brindle. He should at least be impeached NOW. That way we can get to Cheney and Bush for war crimes.
‘Trust me and vote for it”
“If you don’t vote for it, that means you don’t trust me, you don’t trust the government (at least the executive branch),” calmly he says.
Now if only Warren could conjure up some fears about her support of Isreal’s blasting little Gazan kids into small pieces. Its simply not enough to rail against economic injustices alone when war crimes of this description are being perpetrated with lots of American money and munitions. Justice is an empty term when it comes to people like Warren. One wonders if she has the moral sense of a raccoon.
What does any of that have to do with TPP?
Moral character in someone that supposedly represents your point of view isn’t of importance to you, son? That’s pretty cynical wouldn’t you agree? Could it be that that’s why you raise the question of relevance?
From the inside, the belief that these people represent us, other than in name only, is kaput. If that were the intent, why do they have more right to serve themselves at our expense than we have to denounce them?
Republicanism is a fraud, no matter what case the R.
Adding, people outside the US know that USians are a very mobile, rootless people, but tend not to make the connection between that quality and the ineffectiveness of electoral defeat as a disciplinary measure. Fallen pols aren’t compelled by any social or legal means to return to their districts, so that they face the ongoing opprobrium of their disenchanted constituency.
Moral purity is the route to powerlessness in politics. Warren’s issues are finance and getting a better deal for the American middle class. She frankly does not care about foreign policy and she is not on ANY foreign policy committees. So she couldn’t play a leadership role on these issues even if she wanted to. She’d be ridiculed as out of the info loop and just grandstanding. It would damage her credibility on the issues she does care about. And I hate to tell you, if you are only getting the establishment propaganda, you do believe Israel’s blather.
Yes, I’d rather she were opposed to Israel’s conduct, but she’d be shooting herself in the foot as far as her main agenda is concerned.
If anti-BDS bills were to be moving along with this, as was ostensibly an earlier plan, I’d think even the slightest nod toward “I oppose this bill because, according to SCOTUS, money is speech.” would make heads spin.
Well it would seem, then, that in your view, what is ultimate in politics is the promotion of narrow personal objectives. And, silly me, here I thought that a public service that derived its merit from a more comprehensive vision of one’s responsibility had the weightier claim.
So if we’re to believe you, Warren’s value consists in a kind of a conscious and focused amorality aimed at acquiring and dispensing power. And her disinterest in anything outside of her particular area of specialty stems specifically from the pursuit of these aims, even to the point of not concerning to inform herself truthfully, for example, about “Israel’s blather”. I’d say we’ve had quite enough of the trash that envisions their public responsibilities in this way. What’s ultimate here isn’t Warren’s political effectiveness or her personal ambitions but the truth and that requires a sense of self-abnegation. I say the hell with her personally conceived goals.
Thank you, Mr. Thalmann. If this “democracy” thing is going to work, some basic humanity must be demanded of our representatives. In a less eloquent way than you, I call BS on Yves’ idea that we can count on anyone who is a technocrat on the economy but professes faith in American exceptionalism to the point the U.S. can be allowed to blow apart innocent civilians with drones and give billions to another small ally who does the same.
I agree about moral character. People need to always bear in mind, Warren is either a neocon or fully cheerleads neocons. And Is there anyone more duplicitous than a neocon? Best to keep your guard up.
If I downloaded the TPP I would spend the rest of my life just staggering through it. Half asleep. And the big questions come to mind even when I hear good explanations. Like how can a country achieve any fiscal planning under these trade treaties? And how can any central bank achieve any monetary control over a sovereign currency? When it is all so interconnected: monetary with fiscal; fiscal with monetary; and now a supra national tribunal which can override it all, not for sovereignty but for private profit. And in the overriding create new conflicts between nations and corporations for which there are no laws anywhere to form coherent precedent? These trade pacts are a nightmare. If we are trying to achieve unity with the EU, the UK and maybe Japan, we should form some sort of union that takes into account the needs of sovereign nations and do that first, laying the groundwork for fair trade.
You mean like the EU and the Euro? Be careful what you wish for.
One Currency.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine an oxford stomping on a human face — forever.
— To paraphrase my creator.
Too big to fail is too big to exist.
If the banks continue to weaken regulations that enable stability, then the only real recourse is to make sure the banks are small enough that when an unstable bank fails it can actually be allowed to fail.
It is not true that US banks cannot trade AAA Canadian sovereign or for that matter any Canadian corporate debt. They must meet market-making exemption where they must show that they have a reasonable expectation that customers may want that debt. http://www.MRVAssociates.com
maybe i’m being cynical, ms. yves, but it seems to me ms. warren is mr. obama in 2007.
i’m glad she’s raising heck about tpp, but mr. obama was raising heck about nafta back then.