Sure, American politicians have been bought
and paid for by the Wall Street giants. See
this,
this and
this.
And everyone knows that the White House and Congress - while
talking about cracking
down on Wall Street with strict regulation - have actually
watered down some of the most important protections that were
in place.
For example, Senator Cantwell
says that the new derivatives
legislation is weaker
than the old regulation. And leading credit default swap
expert Satyajit Das
says that the new credit
default swap regulations not only won't help stabilize the
economy, they might actually help to
destabilize it.
But the U.S. is not being sold out in a vacuum.
On March 1, 1999, countries accounting for more than 90 per
cent of the global financial services market signed onto the
World Trade Organization's Financial
Services Agreement (FSA). By signing the FSA, they
committed to deregulate their financial markets.
For example, by signing the FSA, the U.S.
agreed not to break up too big to fails.
The U.S. also
promised to repeal Glass-Steagall,
and did so
8 months after signing the
FSA.
Indeed, in signing the FSA and other WTO agreements, the U.S.
has legally bound itself
as follows:
• No new regulation: The United States
agreed to a “standstill provision” that requires that we not
create new regulations (or reverse liberalization) for the
list of financial services bound to comply with WTO rules.
Given that the United States has made broad WTO financial
services commitments – and thus is forbidden by this
provision from imposing new regulations in these many areas
– this provision seriously limits the policy [options]
available to address the current crisis.
• Removal of regulation: The United States even agreed to
try to even eliminate domestic financial service regulatory
policies that meet GATS [i.e. General Agreement on Trade in
Services] rules, but that may still “adversely affect the
ability of financial service suppliers of any other (WTO)
Member to operate, compete, or enter” the market.
• No bans on new financial service “products”: The United
States is also bound to ensure that foreign financial
service suppliers are permitted “to offer in its territory
any new financial service,” a direct conflict with the
various proposals to limit various risky investment
instruments, such as certain types of derivatives.
• Certain forms of regulation banned outright: The United
States agreed that it would not set limits on the size,
corporate form or other characteristics of foreign firms in
the broad array of financial services it signed up to WTO
strictures ...
• Treating foreign and domestic firms alike is not
sufficient: The GATS market-access limits on U.S. domestic
regulation apply in absolute terms; that is to say, even if
a policy applies to domestic and foreign firms alike, if it
goes beyond what WTO rules permit, it is forbidden. And,
forms of regulation not outright banned by the market-access
requirements must not inadvertently “modify the conditions
of competition in favor of services or service suppliers” of
the United States, even if they apply identically to foreign
and domestic firms.
In other words, the problem isn't just that
Congress and the White House have sold out to the Wall Street
giants.
The problem is also that the U.S. has signed WTO agreements
that have given the keys to the too big to fail, and have
neutered their regulators. Even if some politicians tried to
stand up to Wall Street - or even if we "through out all of
the bums" currently in political roles - the U.S. would still
be locked into the WTO's scheme for helping the financial
giants to grow ever bigger and to take ever-bigger and
ever-riskier gambles.
Indeed, the financial giants are pushing hard for
further deregulation,
demanding that the WTO's "Doha round" of agreements be signed.
On the other hand, if the American people stood up for our
sovereignty and demanded that the financial giants be reined
in, it would be easy to fix the WTO agreements which the U.S.
has already signed. Public Citizen
notes, "as a legal matter,
these problems are easy to remedy ..."
Will the American people stand up and demand that the WTO
deregulatory scheme be rolled back?
Or will we continue to let the financial giants destroy our
country through buying and selling politicians (with the
help of the Supreme Court)
and forcing us into more and more draconian WTO treaties which
destroy our sovereignty altogether?
Many people assume that they just have to hang in there until
things improve. But the powers-that-be are grabbing more and
more power and - unless we stand up to them - they will take
it all.
As highly-regarded economist Michael Hudson, Distinguished
Research Professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City,
who has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian
governments as well as the United Nations Institute for
Training and Research, and who is a former Wall Street
economist at Chase Manhattan Bank who helped establish the
world’s first sovereign debt fund)
said:
"You have to realize that what they’re
trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back
the moral philosophy and social values of classical
political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era
legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They’re
not trying to make the economy more equal, and they’re not
trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted)
infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional
values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values.
The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage.
The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of
economic progress and rising living standards, it’s the
dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory
agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite."
And Foreign Policy magazine ran an article
entitled "The
Next Big Thing: Neomedievalism", arguing that the
power of nations is declining, and being replaced by
corporations, wealthy individuals, the sovereign wealth funds
of monarchs, and city-regions.
We either stand up, or we slip back into a darker age.