Wall Street made sure that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the first trade agreement since the 2008 financial crisis, would vastly expand its ability to gamble with other countries’ money. The “too big to fail” Wall Street banks hit the jackpot with the TPP.

Here are some goodies that Wall Street got into the TPP:

Although financial products like toxic derivatives played a key role in the 2008 financial crisis, the TPP would require TPP countries to allow new financial products and services, even those not yet invented, if permitted in other TPP countries. Wall Street bankers, having already made billions in the 2008 crash, will get even richer under the TPP.

The TPP would empower some of the world’s largest financial firms based in TPP countries to launch claims in extrajudicial tribunals (called ISDS) against U.S. financial policies. With the stroke of the pen, the Obama administration completely undermined the ability of Congress and future presidents to provide stability to the U.S. economy. There goes the Dodd-Frank Act, the weak, but questionably better than nothing, reforms that followed the 2008 crash.

Capital controls and macro-financial policies that regulate capital flows to promote financial stability are forbidden. And U.S. government debt restructuring could be challenged by foreign corporations in ISDS tribunals outside the U.S. court system.

How could anyone other than the big bankers support these measures? They will wreak havoc on economies and societies (including the U.S.) so that the big banks can once again rip off the poor and working and middle classes of this world.

For more information, see http://www.citizen.org/TPP.

Please tell Congressman Polis to oppose the TPP at 303-484-9596. Get involved with the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center to defeat the TPP by calling 720-509-3378.

Carolyn Bninski

Boulder