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New World Order Title: Wall Street titans who crashed global economy in 2008 go big for TPP By Jon Queally Even as millions and millions of Americansrepresented by thousands of labor, environmental, family farm, consumer, faith, Internet freedom and other advocacy organizationscontinue to stand firmly in opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, those backing the TPP, including President Obama and a large majority of the Republican caucus, still have two dedicated demographic groups pledging their allegiance to the cause and arguing the so-called free trade agreement (FTA) would be good for average workers and the economy overall: billionaires and Wall Street titans. As Zach Carter of the Huffington Post reports: Last week, dozens of New York Citys power elite signed a letter to the states congressional delegation, urging lawmakers to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership now in negotiations. Democrats in Congress largely oppose the TPP, and Republican leaders have said they dont have the votes needed to pass it without Democratic support. But while Obama has struggled to win over members of his own party he has been publicly feuding with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wealthy CEOs probably arent the ideal pitchmen to skeptical Democrats. Even if their letter hails the TPP as a catalyst for creating new jobs in the United States that will benefit American workers in a broad range of industries. Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch signed the letter. So did Steven Schwarzman, who once compared the prospect of raising taxes on private equity magnates like himself to Hitlers invasion of Poland. John Paulson, the Republican mega-donor who made a fortune betting against the housing market with Goldman Sachs, is also a signee. So is vulture investor Wilbur Ross, who spent six figures to support GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 and has backed such conservative hardliners as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.). Other signatories include real estate billionaire Jerry Speyer, who recently attended a $100,000-per-person fundraiser to bolster former Florida Gov. Jeb Bushs White House hopes. The host of that event, private equity kingpin Henry Kravis, also signed. News of the letter, which can be read in full here, came on the same day as new trade data released by the U.S. Census Bureau, covering the full first three years of the bilateral trade deal between the U.S. and South Korea, revealed that the U.S. goods trade deficit with that country has more than doubled since the agreement, first signed in 2007 and amended in 2010, was implemented. What the new data shows, according to the advocacy group Public Citizen, is economic outcomes that are the opposite of the Obama administrations more exports, more jobs promise used to push through that deal, which are the same promises the administration and those supporting TPP are now using as they attempt to persuade Congress to approve Fast Track authority and ram it through Congress without debate or amendment. The new economic statistics, explains Public Citizen, offer a damning indictment of the promises on which such deals are sold: U.S. goods exports to Korea have dropped 6 percent, or $2.7 billion, under the Korea FTAs first three years, while goods imports from Korea have surged 19 percent, or $11.3 billion (comparing the deals third year to the year before implementation). As a result, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has swelled 104 percent, or more than $14 billion. The trade deficit increase equates to the loss of more than 93,000 American jobs in the first three years of the Korea FTA, counting both exports and imports, according to the trade-jobs ratio that the Obama administration used to project gains from the deal. [...] Record-breaking U.S. trade deficits with Korea have become the new normal under the FTA in 35 of the 36 months since the Korea FTA took effect, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has exceeded the average monthly trade deficit seen in the three years before the deal. In January 2015, the monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea topped $3 billion the highest level on record. The administration has tried to deflect attention from the failure of its Korea FTA by claiming that its poor performance has been caused by economic stagnation in Korea. However, Koreas economy has grown during each year of the Korea FTA, while U.S. exports to Korea have not. Despite those figures and the collapse of the U.S. manufacturing sector in the age of neoliberal globalization, the repeated line from TPP supporters is that these deals are job creators. As the letter from the billionaire elites to the New York Congressional Delegation stated, TPP would be a catalyst for creating new jobs in the United States, attracting more foreign investment to this country, and benefitting American workers in a broad range of industries. But thats simply not what the evidence from past FTAs shows, said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizens Global Trade Watch, in a statement on Tuesday. Whos going to buy the argument about Fast Track and the TPP creating more exports, more jobs when Obamas only major trade deal, used as the TPP template, was sold under that very slogan and yet has done the opposite? And Dave Johnson, from the Campaign for Americas Future, explained in a Tuesday post how none of this just happened by accident, but that corporate-friendly trade policies have created these job-killing conditions: Globalization is not some kind of inevitable natural process of history that has caught up with us. This was and is the result of intentional policy choices, designed to force deindustrialization, break unions, drive down wages and benefits and increase inequality as that pay differential is pocketed by a few. This is the result of the free market, free trade ideology that rose up in the late 70s. Free trade policy was and is designed to give a few plutocrats and their giant corporations the 1 percent increased power over governments. Dean Baker, in Globalization Was Policy, Not Something That Happened, explained,
inequality, like the path of globalization, is not something that happened. It was and is the result of conscious policy. We wont be able to deal with it effectively until we acknowledge this simple fact. In his reporting for Huffington Post, Carter makes it clear that it wasnt only billionaires who signed the letter urging for Fast Track and TPP approval. Some, he told his readers, were merely millionaire CEOs like Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein, Kenneth Chenault of American Express, and JP Morgans Jamie Dimon. This article originally appeared on Common Dreams.
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#2. To: Deckard (#0)
Shit. Those millions and millions don't even know what the Trans-Pacific Partnership is. And if Democrats, labor groups and environmentalists oppose it, that just makes me like it more. Whatever "it" is.
You will eat rat poison then. Cool.
Does your mom know that you're using her computer?
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