TISA: Obama’s Latest Betrayal of America and Americans in Favor of the Big Banks (William K. Black) [View all]

[Octafish]

William K. Black is a well-respected expert on white collar crime. As a forensic economist in the employ of the federal government, he helped jail hundreds of S&L crooks in the 1990s.



Obama’s Latest Betrayal of America and Americans in Favor of the Big Banks: TISA

By William K. Black
New Economic Perspectives, June 24, 2014

Introduction

EXCERPT...

“Transparency” for Bankers: Maximum Opaqueness for the Public and Congress

The TISA draft (Article X.16) is very clear about the second great paradox: bankers must be told everything that regulators are thinking about adopting and have ample opportunity to influence the regulators’ drafting of the rule. But TISA is an international secret that will remain an international secret for five years after it is adopted. Like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the drafts are kept secret even from Congress. Indeed, TISA is “classified” so that those who might blow the whistle on the travesty may be prosecuted. The draft’s initial information contains this language:

“Declassify on: Five years from entry into force of the TISA agreement….

It must be stored in a locked or secured building, room, or container.”

I note this obvious, indefensible hypocrisy because it is illustrative of the entire draft. When the indefensible appears in a document like this it is because the drafters know that there is no one representing the other side and they can afford to be outrageously one-sided. It was clearly drafted by and for lobbyists for the SDIs. Any government officials involved in the drafting are simply scribes who will be rewarded on the other side of the revolving door. There is no pretense that the draft is a reasoned response to differing views. Only one set of views – literally the wish list of the largest, most criminal banks – is presented and it is presented in exceptionally extreme language. There is literally nothing in the draft designed to increase the regulatory protections afforded the public from private banks. There is literally nothing in the draft that increases restrictions on private banks.

As a lawyer I recognize exactly what happened because the draft reads exactly like how we draft a wish list. Obama is a lawyer. Mr. President, read the draft and it will be obvious to you that no one is representing the public. The President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (an economist), was outraged when he learned of what the bankers were trying to achieve through TISA. Sadly, the U.S. played a disgraceful role in pushing TISA forward over Ecuador’s objections. If Obama were to admit that Ecuador was right, bring the U.S. back to representing the public rather than the looters, and make public the entire disgraceful draft TISA would collapse.

TISA’s drafting consists of a meeting of banking thieves who are successfully demanding a return to what Gramlich correctly described as “no cops on the beat.” If the street robbers of the world demanded that we remove the cops on the beat we would be enraged. Bankers and their neoclassical economist allies, however, regularly lobby for just such a boon to elite white-collar criminals. We have millennia of experience with what happens when we give the elites the power to loot with impunity.

CONTINUED w/links...

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/06/obamas-latest-betrayal-america-americans-favor-big-banks-tisa.html

The three “de’s” – deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization – first looted America's S&Ls and then America's banks. Now, TiSA wants to deregulate the world's banks. Anyone think the money will go to a good cause?