In response to Scarecrow @ 2
I can hardly believe you’re saying this.
This agreement is going to give Korean corporations the status of nations to sue the US government in international courts for violations of NAFTA laws.
If we want to, say, regulate derivatives, and that’s against this treaty (and it is), corporations who want to assert that they have lost money they would have otherwise made can sue the US in WTO and UN courts.
If they win, US TAXPAYERS have to pay. We’ve already paid $400 million to companies in such cases. Our own courts have no authority over the judgments, and we’ve spent millions more defending those cases we’ve won. There are billions more in judgments pending.
Companies can also bring suit if we try to regulate land use for environmental purposes that causes them to “lose” money. Or if we try to encourage the adoption of green technologies in ways that make their products less profitable.
Who CAN’T bring suit? Labor unions. So the White House is currently withholding its support from the Steelworkers’ 301 petition to these tribunals, challenging the Chinese with NAFTA violations that are decimating the steel industry. Unless the US government brings the case, the Steelworkers don’t have the status to do so.
The reason banks like JP Morgan and Citi think it’s a good idea is because it restricts our ability to regulate them. George Bush worked hard to get that into the agreement in 2007, and Obama is adopting it whole hog in this one. We can’t bring back Glass-Steagel, for instance.
And it also creates a court above US courts, which the banks can control with a lot more ease than they can individual sovereign courts. Whose judgments we agree to submit to. So that it’s even beyond the ability of OUR justice system to get these monster banks under control.
You’re going to have to work for a very long time to convince me this isn’t just about the stupidest thing we could ever contemplate doing, Scarecrow.
