The left is so wrong on the Trans-Pacific Partnership

[madamesilverspurs]

...
But then we have Warren stating with a straight face that handing negotiating authority to Obama would “give Republicans the very tool they need to dismantle Dodd-Frank.”

Huh? Obama swatted down the remark as wild, hypothetical speculation, noting he engaged in a “massive” fight with Wall Street to get the reforms passed. “And then I sign a provision that would unravel it?” he told political writer Matt Bai.
...
Trade agreements have a thousand moving parts. The United States can’t negotiate with the other countries if various domestic interests are pouncing on the details. That’s why every president has been given fast-track authority over the past 80 years or so.

Except Obama.

http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/the-left-is-so-wrong-on-the-trans-pacific-partnership/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=article_left




.

[Vincardog]

1. Horse $

[BillZBubb]

5. Yep.

[840high]

58. Ditto

[treestar]

2. And they've been negotiating without releasing the details until they are done

for years. But in Obama's case, it's "secretive."

[daleanime]

27. And the 'deals' have always been in the interest of American Workers.....

[treestar]

33. That's always debatable

Saying they are never in the interests of the workers is debatable too.

[daleanime]

38. Open debate would be nice.

[Recursion]

67. That's simplistic, but they've done a lot of good. Witness the post-NAFTA economy of the late 1990s

Which, despite the "see no good hear no good" attitude of the anti-trade contingent here, was the best time for American workers since the 1950s (and the only wage gains since the 1970s).

It's not that I mind opposition to NAFTA; I mind people saying blatantly false things about NAFTA, like:

1. After NAFTA's passage, US unemployment went up (it went down, and is lower now than it was in 1993)
2. After NAFTA's passage, US labor participation went down (it went up)
3. After NAFTA's passage, US median wages went down (they went up, and are higher than they have ever been)
4. After NAFTA's passage, US poverty went up (it went down, and is lower than it has ever been)
5. After NAFTA's passage, US manufacturing output decreased (it increased, and is higher than it has ever been -- and the decrease in manufacturing employment slowed for the first time in 30 years, though W fucked it all up by lowering taxes a decade after NAFTA passed)

There's a lot I'd change about NAFTA, particularly how it favors US farms over Mexican ones, but pretty much all of the jobs shipped overseas went to China, a country we don't have a free trade agreement with and probably won't within our lifetimes because China will never meet the labor requirements for one.

[daleanime]

70. When did 'simplistic'.....

come to mean wrong?

[Recursion]

71. It's always been that way

Reductionist explanations almost never work for complex systems, and economies are very complex systems.

[daleanime]

72. Kindly inform Merriam-Webster.....

must be nice not to worry about the parts that grind down as long as it benefits some one.

[Recursion]

73. See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. M-W is a general purpose dictionary

Pointing to a definition in M-W to make a point other than about the spelling of a word is kind of silly.

[daleanime]

81. Missing

Point














Like a boss.(need head in sand smilie)

[upaloopa]

76. It was the Dot com bubble that pushed the economy

in the 90's. You are full of lies.

[Recursion]

78. How, pray tell, did the overpricing of tech stocks push the economy?

Particularly when it was a stock increase based on millions of people like travel agents and phone operators losing their jobs?

[upaloopa]

85. Go read a history book

[sabrina 1]

39. This article you are supporting is full of false information, so full of it I thought it was

meant to be sarcasm.

BUSH was denied Fast Tracking in 2007 eg and the practice itself is from a law in 1974. Where did she get this 80 years from where no president was denied FT? Clinton had it for only two years, then it was taken from him also. So no, it isn't 'just Obama'.

What a load of made up nonsense. How embarrassing that any publication would put such incorrect garbage on their site, and now it is on this site, and with recs! Which only goes to show how little the facts mean.

[tritsofme]

43. Not 80 years, but Obama would be the only president since 1974 to not have fast track authority.

[Exilednight]

74. Obama promised a more transparitive administration, why should

We not hold him accountable to the promise?

[ucrdem]

3. Oh heck yes.

Last edited Wed May 20, 2015, 09:07 PM - Edit history (1)

The noise machine plays its boring tune and we wind up humming it for the next three decades. NAFTA didn't cause the dot-com crash, the housing bubble or the credit crisis: Bush-Cheney's grotesquely irresponsible handling of the US economy caused them. Pinning the blame on Bill Clinton and pretending that Obama is secretly conniving to crash his own recovery is pure hateful lunacy.

[MFrohike]

7. Wow

So, that's what the "liberal" version of the right's Community Reinvestment Act myth. Curious, to say the least.

The dotcom crash occurred before W came into office and I've never heard anyone with the slightest bit of sense blame it on NAFTA. The financial crisis of 2008 was a bi-partisan affair, unless you somehow think W forced Clinton to accede to the Rubinites' demands not to regulate derivatives in the 90s. That'd sure as hell put a new spin on the BFEE bit.

Don't read this as a defense of the shrub. His administration ignored over 10k complaints from appraisers who warned that pressure from mortgage originators to fraudulently overstate housing values was systemic. His Secretary of the Treasury also made one of the dumbest decisions in American history when he let Lehman fail. When I call it dumb, it's not an after the fact appraisal. It should have been blindingly apparent to a former Goldman managing director that Lehman's interconnectedness would be a catastrophic danger. Unfortunately for us, we got proof that Goldman puts morons in charge and so did W.

[ucrdem]

50. "The financial crisis of the 2008 was a bi-partisan affair"??

Seriously?

[MFrohike]

64. Yep

2008 was a function of a derivatives market gone wild as much as anything else. Rubin and Summers teamed up to defeat Brooksley's Born's proposal in the late 90s to regulate the derivatives market. She sought to regulate the swaps market, which she felt was entirely too opaque and vulnerable to crisis. Given that the crisis in 2007-08 began in the swaps market, particularly credit default swaps, she looks prescient as a result.

The trouble in the CDS (credit default swaps) market directly led to the bankruptcy of AIG. AIG, in a fit of stupdity, agreed to take bets made against the housing market with a variety of entities. One of the most notorious was the Abacus deal. In Abacus, Goldman put together a set of the worst tranches of loans in a CDO, sold it to their investors, and then bet against it, using AIG as their bookie. A credit default swap is an insurance policy against a certain market going in an undesired direction. Now, in the case of a party with an actual interest in the underlying deal, it makes sense. A bank could make a risky loan, then buy a CDS from another party which would pay them in case of a default on that loan. The problem with the CDS market is that anyone, not just parties with an actual interest in the underlying deal, can buy one on any given deal. Rather than follow the traditional policy of insurable interest as you would see in home insurance, the CDS market allows anyone to make a bet. Had the Clinton administration pushed for the regulation of the derivatives market, rather than against it, it's quite possible that insurable interest would have become part of this market. That could have proved instrumental in preventing the crisis from becoming as large as it did. It could have been the difference between LTCM and Lehman.

That's just one example of how a Democratic administration made decisions that would prove disastrous in 2007-08. The final repeal of Glass-Steagall allowed commercial banks to do proprietary trading without needing to get a waiver from Treasury, so the leverage employed by those banks ballooned as a result. While it was never on the same level as the investment banks, who were entirely insolvent by the time Obama came into office, it was enough to put them under strain. Citi actually was insolvent and should have been resolved in 2009-10. It wasn't resolved because Rubin was the chairman and his acolyte, Larry Summers, was back in the White House.

The Bush administration did plenty to add to the crisis itself.. It's unlikely that it would have taken the shape it did if that administration had given the endemic fraud in mortgage appraisal even a cursory glance. Had that administration paid attention when whistleblowers came forward to report that the loan pools that made up the late-stage MBS market were primarily comprised of stated-income loans (aka liar's loans), most of the pain could have been spared. These are just two examples of complete regulatory failure on the part of W and his dumbasses, who were content to watch an obvious bubble inflate without a care in the world.

So, yeah, it really was a bi-partisan affair. It feels good to blame the other team, but it's dishonest. If all you want to do is rah-rah for the home team, have at it. Just don't pretend that it has any bearing whatsoever on reality.

[sabrina 1]

40. You actually agree with this piece of total BS filled with false information??? Anyone who says

that 'every president for 80 years was granted fast tracking', ... there just are no words to describe how bad this is and to think anyone on this forum would rec it?

Fast Tracking was a law from 1974 under Nixon, that isn't 80 years ago is it, and at least TWO OTHER PRESIDENTS were denied the use of it since then.

As for ANYONE who uses the term 'THE LEFT' well, the writer of that linked article is obvously a right winger for sure, so it's no surprise to see so many bad errors, so much made up nonsense, in any thing coming from the right.

The best thing to do with this piece of yellow 'journalism' would be to delete it and then post some facts about FT.

Used to be you could learn things on DU. Facts are important though apparently not to that author.

[ucrdem]

45. It's an op-ed, and if that all you've got you don't have much. nt

[sabrina 1]

68. Lol, what I've got are facts. What you call an op ed wouldn't pass a 1st grade test, for accuracy,

bias, not to mention the total lack of writing skills.

I corrected the false information in that pathetic pretext of 'journalism'.

In a country with any standards of journalism, that individual would be fired, no, they would never have been hired in the first place.

It's an embarrassment to this forum to see such false information posted here.

This used to be a place where you could rely on some standards.

[ucrdem]

87. Okay that's all you've got. And if you really want to get picky

I happen to think she's misusing "left" because as I see it the opposition to TPP is libertarian, not left. But since many here also confuse those terms I'm going to cut the writer some slack.

[tularetom]

54. I'm as willing as the next guy to blame stuff on Bush and Cheney

But they're pretty much off the hook for the dot.com crash. Since it began in 1999 and was in full swing by the time Bush took office in Jan 2001.

Whether or not NAFTA had anything to do with it, I don't know. But it happened on Clinton's watch.

[LWolf]

4. The anti-left on DU.

While it's true that DU no longer bills itself as a "left-wing" message board, and is no longer really "underground," this is still my reaction:

Edited to add:

Of course, the Obama White House threw the left under the bus a long time ago, legitimizing anti-left positions in the party.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026700939#post5

[Doctor_J]

15. the party and DU are infested with DINOs, which is why the party's on its deathbed

I have doubts that any of these right wingers were ever Dems.

[LondonReign2]

16. Third Wayers are nothing but moderate Republicans masquerading as Democrats

It's little wonder they side with Mitch McConnell & Co over actual Democrats

[LWolf]

24. Put your response and Dr. J's together, and you get

a party infested with moderate republicans...who fled their own party's move into batshit territory. That's really the issue; the Democratic Party is no longer the party of social and economic justice. Yes, there are still some; a faction that continues to be marginalized and pushed further to the fringe.

[Chan790]

28. They get ever so pissy when you suggest that they should go back to where they came from...

and take their free-trading third-way corporatist Clintonite friends with them.

Are other people finally waking-up to my long-standing point that we need a party purge and a progressive litmus test?

[villager]

56. You can't keep parroting corporate tallking points while calling yourself an "Underground," and yet

....many here still do. With a straight face, no less.

[LWolf]

61. Mind boggling,

isn't it?

[villager]

62. Both mind boggling, and somewhat sad and pathetic. "Oooh! I'm an edgy apologist for a global

...corporate agenda! I'm an undergrounder!"

[LWolf]

63. You said it better than I.

[BillZBubb]

6. I hardly find it comforting that other presidents have been given fast track...

Almost all of the trade deals they did benefitted the 1% and the transnational corporations at the expense of American wage earners.

The TPP will be no different, no matter what president Obama says.

[tridim]

29. You just called our President a liar...

Like every dumbass Republican I know IRL does.

It's nothing short of pathetic to see this crap over and over on DEMOCRATIC Underground. If you hate us so much, leave.

[Trajan]

34. WTF ?

What a ridiculous statement. ..

I don't have to agree with the President, and that does NOT make me a Republican ...

[tridim]

37. I wasn't talking to you.

Chill out.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

77. If you want your conversations private, take them elsewhere.

In the meantime, we are all free to respond to the shit you post. You have some questions put to you that you haven't answered. Let's get busy.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

83. If that's the level at which you operate, your idea to ignore me is a good one.

[BillZBubb]

42. Apparently, logic and civililty are strangers to you.

I did not call the president a liar. The president is wrong about TPP. Being wrong doesn't make him a liar.

TPP is another in a series of disastrous trade deals foisted on the American people by the rich and powerful. It is too bad the president doesn't realize that.

[tridim]

80. "The TPP will be no different, no matter what president Obama says"

You called him a liar.

No matter, you're on ignore because you are incapable of judging honesty in people who have earned it.

[840high]

60. Are you denying he has lied in the past?

[tridim]

82. Everybody has lied at least once in their life. So no I am not.

But he is the most honest politician in my lifetime, by a mile. He has earned every bit of that respect.

[QC]

8. .

[Rex]

19. Yep, pretty much that. nt

nt

[arcane1]

9. I'm waiting for an explanation why the repubs are giving him unprecedented support on this.

When both sides work together, I get nervous. Voices I trust are against this, while voices I mistrust, or have fragile trust, are for it.

Obama and the republicans are right, and the Democrats are wrong. Something doesn't add up.

[TBF]

10. So why all the secrecy?

What is it that you think we little people won't understand?

[Katashi_itto]

11. DU has crossed into the Twilight Zone... Promoting the Oligarchy..

[Oilwellian]

12. Indeed. We live in bizarro times. n/t

[sabrina 1]

23. And with false information. Bush was denied Fast Tracking of his Trade Bill in 2007.

And Fast Tracking was not introduced until the '70s

Article says no one has been denied in 80 years! Lol, at least get the facts straight.

[Art_from_Ark]

31. To some of these whippersnappers,

the '70s might as well have been 80 years ago!

[villager]

86. But, but, but...it's *our* oligarchy now! So that makes it cool!

[Motown_Johnny]

13. Ahhhh.. but we can negotiate with other countries

even when our own various domestic interests are "pouncing" on the details.


The TPP is going to involve roughly 40% of the worlds GDP. That 40% is 22% from us and 18% from all other countries involved combined.

We deserve to be able to discuss the details openly before Congress approves the deal. If the other countries don't like it then they can back out. We are the major player here and should be acting like it.

[sabrina 1]

14. Is this a joke? 'every president has been given fast track for the past 80 years'

You've got to be kidding, Fast Track was first introduced in the '70s. By my math that doesn't add up to 80 years.

Not to mention that Bush tried to Fast Track a Trade bill in 2007 and FAILED. Yes, he didn't get it!

In fact airc, Fast Track has been denied more than it has passed. I will find the stats on this. But the 80 years claim kind of blows any crediblity whoever wrote this might have ever had.

Who writes this stuff?

Unless as I stated, it is a joke.

[Oilwellian]

17. I thought Bush failed at getting Fast Track

Thanks for confirming that, sabrina and keep shining that light.

[nationalize the fed]

20. Guess who was proud to say she wouldn't trust Bush with fast track?

Skip to 18:18

Of course, the whole lot were pandering to Union Members. Which was all forgotten as soon as they left town.

[sabrina 1]

22. What is her position now? Because if she didn't trust the last Bush, if this passes, the next Bush

will be the one to take advantage of it. It's a six year bill and Obama will have the powers granted by its passage for probably less than a year.

This is for the next President, who could very well be another Bush.

[sabrina 1]

21. Bush did fail, Dems and a few Republicans stopped his Fast Track Trade Bill from passing.

It's interesting, because he tried it in 2007, about the same time in his presidency as Obama's right now.

I guess they weren't willing to risk the anger of the people when they were still likely to be up for reelection.

I guess the powers that run things in this country now try with both parties, if one fails, they get the other to try.

Great system they set up.

Which is why I am supporting the only candidate who is not beholden to them, BERNIE!

[tritsofme]

44. Bush had fast track from 2002-2007. It was not extended in 2007.

[deutsey]

30. The columnist, obviously, is not interested in the facts

or engaging in an honest debate of the subject.

This is her ham-fisted attempt at smearing "a showboating" Warren and "the left", for which I'm sure she's been amply rewarded.

[villager]

55. Nor, would it seem, is the OP.

n/t

[deutsey]

69. That would seem to be the case.

[nationalize the fed]

18. "Trade agreements have a thousand moving parts"

These "agreements" used to be called TREATIES.

Do you know why they are now called "Agreements"?

The answer to that question is worth millions and millions of jobs.

[Art_from_Ark]

47. A thousand moving parts

and they're all supposed to come together like some Rube Goldberg contraption on steroids to accomplish "free trade".

[GeorgeGist]

25. Do the math ...

2015-1975 = 80 years or so. Problem solved.

[cali]

26. another hit and run OP

[Fast Walker 52]

32. maybe because the people have woken up and are tired of this crap!

It's nothing to do with Obama specifically.

[magical thyme]

35. Canada’s Finance Minister Says Volcker Rule Violates Nafta...wants US to amend rule

Minister wants U.S. to amend the rule banning banks from trading triple-A-rated Canadian debt
By
Paul Vieira

Updated May 13, 2015 4:57 p.m. ET

A U.S. rule that prohibits banks from taking risky bets with their own money violates the North American Free-Trade Agreement because it bans U.S. banks from trading triple-A-rated Canadian government debt, Canada’s finance minister said Wednesday.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/canadas-finance-minister-says-volcker-rule-violates-nafta-1431541914



The rest is behind a paywall.

Maybe Canada will beat the GOP to it.

[G_j]

36. from the fact free zone

making stuff up is fun..

[Erose999]

41. I don't trust President Obama on this nor do I trust the GOOP in Congress. But I'll stand up and

cheer for obstruction coming from EITHER side on this issue. This NAFTA 2.0 bullshit needs to die. If it takes another 3 months of Benghazi hearings, House votes to repeal Obamacare and other do-nothing GOP bullshit to kill TPP then thats fine. The less real work Congress (and the President, for that matter) do at this point, the better.

[99Forever]

46. If it IS so fucking wonderful...

... why is Obama AFRAID to let us see it? ALL of it. ALL of us.

WELL?

[ucrdem]

48. You will, when it's finished. And you'll have at least 60 days to express your views to your rep

and senators before they vote to ratify it. If TPA passes that is.

[99Forever]

49. Fuck that.

Undemocratic fucking bullshit.

[ucrdem]

51. What's undemocratic? That's democracy in action. You can play or not. nt

[99Forever]

53. Bullshit.

It's a goddamn corporate end-around democracy. Obama should be ashamed of himself for this blatant fucking of We the People. This backstabbing will not go without a price.

[ucrdem]

59. Yes, I know exactly how you feel

as you've made your feelings clear several times a day for as long as I've been here. Maybe not you personally but some bilious Bernie-avatar or other has reliably logged onto every thread in every topic to spread predictable Bernie cheer since forever or maybe it just seems that way. Anyway since no information any of us can ever supply will budge your outrage meter half a micron the only advice I can sincerely give you is to find a better news source than the one that seems to feed you nothing but hateful slogans.

[99Forever]

65. Bye bye.

[WillyT]

52. The Naivete.. Is ASTOUNDING !!!

[neverforget]

57. Past 80 years or so? Lol. Fast Track or TPA was first passed in 1974.

2015-1974=41. Oops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_track_%28trade%29

Congress started the fast track authority in the Trade Act of 1974, § 151–154 (19 U.S.C. § 2191–2194). This authority was set to expire in 1980, but was extended for eight years in 1979.[1] It was renewed in 1988 for five years to accommodate negotiation of the Uruguay Round, conducted within the framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).[2] It was then extended to 16 April 1994,[3][4][5] which is one day after the Uruguay Round concluded in the Marrakech Agreement, transforming the GATT into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Pursuant to that grant of authority, Congress then enacted implementing legislation for the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Area, the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Uruguay Round Agreements Act.

[Recursion]

66. True. From 1934 until 1974, TPA didn't even need to be voted on; it was just a given

It's yet another policy from everyone here's hero, FDR.

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

75. People are wising up

Even if this article was true (which has already been disproved here on DU), people are wising up. Why should we continue to get screwed by the one percent?