Trade Deals are a Way to Subvert Laws, Nothing More.
This is going to be a short one with a number of things culled from the attached CNN article. What I will say is the Panama Papers confirm what I have long maintained; the only purpose ‘trade deals’ serve is to subvert national, international and local law for the financial benefit of the super-rich at the expense of ALL the PEOPLE of the nations they are scamming.
This should make ALL of the United States government think again about The Trans-Pacific Partnership.
If it doesn’t, it should make ALL of us think again about OUR United States government.
A Note on the Oligarchy
This isn’t our grandfather’s oligarchy. Most of those people rose by their own merit. They were ruthless and very well organized. You can plot the decline of the modern oligarchy by the Bush family. Prescott was a shrewd, unscrupulous, Nazi sympathizing and collaborating, industrialist who was great at playing both sides against the middle. George H.W. not quite so shrewd with a sense of entitlement. George W. not shrewd at all and a monumental sense of entitlement. The oligarchy is devolving and is now in the control of the grandchildren, all of whom think they don’t have to do any thing and the whole world is there to serve them. They flaunt their riches in our faces, rub our poverty or near poverty in our faces and dare us to try to do something about it. There hasn’t been a group more ripe for a fall since the days before the French Revolution. The release of the Panama Papers and what they import may be the first step in that fall.
From CNN, The Panama Papers: 7 things to know”:
“What are the Panama Papers?
Who is mentioned in the documents?
The documents reference 12 current or former world leaders, as well as 128 other politicians and public officials. In addition to allegations involving associates of Putin -- the Russian leader isn't himself mentioned by name in any of the documents -- and
FIFA, the papers
also accuse the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, of having ties, through his wife, to an offshore company that were not properly disclosed, while Argentina's President Mauricio Macri is alleged to have failed to disclose links to a company in his asset declarations.
What are the consequences of this leak?
Ryle says the biggest consequence of the leak is the massive blow to secrecy -- the biggest selling point of offshore tax havens.
"The offshore world really only has one product and that is secrecy and when you take away that product they don't have anything for sale.
"For years and years they've been getting away with this secrecy and we're also seeing in the documents that every time the governments and the authorities try to crack down, they're finding new ways to get around those obstacles or barriers."
CNN's Charles Riley, Laura Perez Maestro, Euan McKirdy, Elizabeth Gonzalez and Alla Eshchenko contributed to this report.”
Link to CNN article, “The Panama Papers: 7 things to know”:
U.S. citizens and politicians are yet to be named but there will be more coming from this document dump. It will be interesting to see how the governments of the world respond. If this doesn’t spark long needed reform and an end to corporations and the oligarchy gaming the system at the expense of the citizenry, I don’t know what will.