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The financial industry has grown ever more powerful in recent decades, so perhaps the world’s governments believe it is only fitting that it has its own secret treaty. Similar to “free trade” agreements that curtail regulation of manufacturers, the Trade In Services Agreement’s Financial Services Annex, if passed, would eliminate the ability of governments to regulate the financial industry.

Incredible as it sounds, the annex, being negotiated in secret among 50 countries with continuing advice from lobbyists, would require signatory governments to allow any corporation that offers a “financial service” — that includes insurance as well as all forms of trading and speculation — to expand operations at will and would prohibit new financial regulations.

The driver of this offensive is the “investor-state dispute mechanism.” Deceptively bland-sounding, the “mechanism” is secret tribunals controlled by corporate lawyers that are commonly used under “free trade” agreements. Corporate executives angered because an environmental or safety rule keeps it from earning the highest possible profit can ask for a hearing at a designated tribunal to adjudicate its “dispute” with a government. Many of the judges who sit on these tribunals are corporate lawyers who otherwise represent corporations, and there is no appeal to their one-sided decisions.

The Financial Services Annex contains language identical to standard language used in “free trade” agreements that obligate “equal treatment” of all corporations. The practical effect of that language would result in the profits of speculators being elevated above all other human considerations, similar to proposed agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that would elevate corporate profits above all other considerations, should they come into force.

The countries negotiating the Trade In Services Agreement (TISA) Financial Services Annex, which include the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and the 28 countries of the European Union, refer to themselves as the “Really Good Friends of Services.” If the “services” in question are services to the financial industry, then these governments are indeed really good friends.

If it is done in secret, it is for a reason

That we know anything at all about the Financial Services Annex is because the text has been published by WikiLeaks. Just as agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are being conducted in secret because, as former U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk admitted, if people knew what was in the TPP, it would never pass, the annex is kept hidden from view, except for industry lobbyists.

The leaked text of the Financial Services Annex states it should be declassified “five years from entry into force of the TISA agreement or, if no agreement enters into force, five years from the close of the negotiations.” A deal designed to give financiers even more power over the economy is a state secret!

As with the ongoing “free trade” agreement negotiations, one should not hold one’s breath waiting for substantive information on TISA or the annex. The latest round of negotiations were held June 23 to 27 in Geneva, and here is what the U.S. Office of the Trade Representative reported, in full:

“The fourth round of TISA talks was positive and productive, with participants expecting to table offers by the end of this month. Additionally, the draft text of the agreement was further stabilized with the removal of all brackets concerning the ‘negative list’ approach. U.S. negotiators look forward to further work on this important agreement.”

Yep, that’s it. Despite that meaningless ode to bureaucratic blandness, the United States and the European Union are vying to introduce the most draconian language. WikiLeaks, in a press release accompanying its publication of the secret text, said:

“The US and the EU are the main proponents of the agreement, and the authors of most joint changes, which also covers cross-border data flow. … The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules which would assist the expansion of financial multi-nationals — mainly headquartered in New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt — into other nations by preventing regulatory barriers. The leaked draft also shows that the US is particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow, which would allow uninhibited exchange of personal and financial data. … [T]he Agreement is being crafted to be compatible with [the General Agreement on Trade in Services] so that a critical mass of participants will be able to pressure remaining [World Trade Organization] members to sign on in the future.”

The intention is to make the agreement universal, solidifying the financial industry’s grip on the global economy.

A backdoor for Wall Street to eliminate Social Security?

Articles 1 and 2 of the Financial Services Annex place no limits on what constitutes covered “financial services”:

“This section/Annex applies to measures affecting the supply of financial services. … A financial service is any service of a financial nature offered by a financial service supplier of a Party. Financial services include all insurance and insurance-related services and all banking and other financial services.”

“Party” in the text refers to a signatory government. Among other provisions, the annex would require:

*Countries to change their laws to conform to the annex’s text (Article 3). *Countries to “eliminate … or reduce [the] scope” of state enterprises (Article 5). *Prohibit any “buy local” rules for government agencies (Article 6). *Prohibit any limitations on foreign financial firms’ activity (articles 7 and 10). *Prohibit restrictions on the transfer of any data collected, including across borders (articles 8 and 11). *Prohibit any restrictions on the size or expansion of financial companies and a ban on new regulations (Article 15). *Require any government that offers financial products through its postal service to lessen the quality of its products so that those are no better than what private corporations offer (Article 22).

Beyond the dry, bureaucratic language in which the annex is written is the crucial matter of how the text will be interpreted. Already, under the North American Free Trade Agreement, a corporate parcel-delivery service sued Canada in an attempt to have the Canadian postal system dismantled. That attempt failed, but as the secret tribunals issue more and more rulings granting more and more “investors’ rights” that become precedents for the next dispute, it is no stretch to believe that a tribunal of three “really good friends” of the financial industry could issue a ruling that a government retirement system such as Social Security is an illegal restraint on private profit.

Wall Street has long desired a privatization of Social Security, and the Financial Services Annex might prove to be the ticket for it to achieve its most sought-after goal and thereby put other countries’ public retirement systems at risk. Articles 5 and 22 hold the potential for a tribunal to rule that a government financial service such as a national retirement system is an unfair state subsidy. Consider Goldman Sachs, where customers are referred to as “muppets” with the intention of “ripping eyeballs out.” The infamous “vampire squid” stands out among its financial-industry peers for its ability to, in the words of Matt Taibbi:

“hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage.”

The foregoing, of course, is the standard operating principal of the entire financial industry. Is this who you want to control the possibility of your retiring some day?

European privacy laws would also be in the crosshairs. The U.S. has proposed language allowing cross-border movements of personal data without restriction, while the E.U. (which is negotiating on behalf of its 28 member countries) has proposed language allowing data transfers ameliorated only by boilerplate language that exempts personal privacy unless it “circumvents” the annex — a loophole wide enough to drive a truck through.

Existing “free trade” agreements have similar boilerplate language supposedly granting exceptions for human health and safety, but other clauses requiring adherence to “international norms” supersede such exceptions, rendering them meaningless.

Speculators would have unconditional rights to profit

Article 20 contains language sponsored by the U.S. and the E.U. that would require investor disputes to be heard by a panel having “the necessary expertise relevant to the specific financial service” — an invitation for bankers to sit in judgment of such disputes — and Article 13 contains language pushed by the U.S. that is essentially identical to text typically found in “free trade” agreements requiring “equal treatment” of domestic and foreign corporations.

It is that “equal treatment” language that is the battering ram used by corporations to knock down national regulations on health, safety and the environment.

For example, Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement codifies the “equal treatment” of business interests in accordance with international law and enables corporations to sue over any regulation or other government act that violates “investor rights,” which means any regulation or act that might prevent the corporation from earning the maximum possible profit. Canada, in two separate cases, had to reverse bans on chemicals known to be dangerous to human health and pay millions of dollars to the chemical manufacturers.

In one of those chemical cases, the tribunal ruled that, when formulating an environmental rule, a government “is obliged to adopt the alternative that is most consistent with open trade.”

These are the types of precedents that will be used to further engorge financial speculators should TISA and its Financial Services Annex become law.

Those living in countries not yet part of these negotiations also have much to fear. Developing countries are mostly shut out of the TISA negotiations. The coalition group Our World Is Not For Sale, which includes more than 200 member organizations, writes:

“The proposed TISA is thus a cynical attempt of the major proponents of so-called ‘free trade’ and aggressive market opening to ensure that corporate wish lists can be fulfilled, without having to make any changes to existing WTO [rules] demanded by poor countries.”

A separate group of 341 civil-society organizations, in an open letter demanding ministers cease TISA negotiations, note that:

“The TISA negotiations largely follow the corporate agenda of using ‘trade’ agreements to bind countries to an agenda of extreme liberalization and deregulation in order to ensure greater corporate profits at the expense of workers, farmers, consumers and the environment. The proposed agreement is the direct result of systematic advocacy by transnational corporations in banking, energy, insurance, telecommunications, transportation, water and other services sectors, working through lobby groups.”

Red carpet for lobbyists, red-baiting for unions

The watchdog group Corporate Europe Observatory reports that the European Commission trade department, which is negotiating on behalf of the E.U.’s 28 countries, has met more than 20 times with the European corporate lobbying group leading the push for TISA, the European Services Forum (ESF), but has met only once with trade unions. In fact, the ESF was set up with the encouragement of the European Commission in the 1990s, leading to a situation “where the public authority lobbies business to lobby itself,” the Observatory said. On the other hand, the Commission has descended to red-baiting unions when they bring up their concerns:

“When the Commission meets concerns about its aggressive services liberalisation agenda, it reacts with ignorance and mockery. A staff member of the European Federation of Public Service Unions, told Corporate Europe Observatory about one of the Commission’s Civil Society Dialogue meetings: ‘When I voiced concerns over the way public services were being dealt with in the EU’s trade policy, one of the officials basically said ‘there is no going back to the Soviet Union.’ ”

Privatization über alles! The European Commission, the bureaucratic arm of the E.U., is free from democratic accountability and if even if it weren’t there would be little or no accountability considering that the four largest blocs within the European Parliament collectively holding 549 of the 751 seats are broadly in favor of “free trade” agreements; the main center-right and center-left blocs hold a majority of the seats between them.

Nor should help be expected from the other side of the Atlantic. Not only does the U.S. consistently push for the most draconian rules regardless of which party is in the White House but its trade representative, Michael Froman, is a former high-ranking executive at Citigroup Inc. who is a protégé of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, an architect of the Clinton administration’s 1990s dismantling of financial regulations, which led to the next decade’s economic collapse.

Multi-national corporations are well organized across borders; financiers and industrialists understand their common interests. If there is any hope to put an end to “free trade” agreements — and then go on the offensive to reverse those already in place — we had better do the same.

Pete Dolack writes the Systemic Disorder blog. He has been an activist with several groups.