I've been wanting to delve into this topic for a while now, and with the leak five days ago I thought I'd post this thread as I descend into what we know so far.

The 25/3 leak was about investment; here's the full text: https://wikileaks.org/tpp-investment/WikiLeaks-TPP-Investment-Chapter.pdf

At a glance, the strictures involved: Parties may not accord to it's own investors no more favorable than of other parties with respect to investments, covering intellectual property (lol) to finance to localized permits. It also prevents nationalization of investments without adequate compensation.

Are corporations are further transcending national borders and desire to turn the world into neoliberal, corporatist purgatory? Or does a world of no tariffs and no government sound good?

I can't help but imagine Reid as the guy with long blonde hair from Good Will Hunting.

It didn't take me long to get up to speed about this, Reid, but you could do us a favor in the future and post like a two sentence 'for the layman' description of basically what the **** you're talking about for those of us who haven't heard of this or been following it yet.

Well, that's certainly one way to prevent the post WW2 prosperity from ever happening again

I am of the opinion that what is essentially the counterpart with us [TTIP] can **** right off.

Sure. A bunch of Pacific nations are silently working on a new trade agreement. This section in particular sets up an international court system wherein corporations can sue nations for interfering with current and future investments. Of course, "investments" according to their legal terms covers just about every product you could imagine, including financial instruments, similar to the type that helped cause the 2009 crash (i.e., derivatives trading).

In other words, a nation wants to reduce pollution? That interferes with MegaChevron's profits, sue. Want to create a public transport system? Can't set up a national park to produce profits, corporations need to log there. Etc.

Oh yeah, and Obama has already said he will assist pushing this thing through as quickly as possible. "Progressive" Obama.

There's also a trans-Atlantic partnership going on, I don't know much about that yet

The partnership makes it rather explicit that these strictures are supposed to apply only if a country is doing so to give itself some sort of unfair advantage, but the wording is vague, for instance, if a country wants to set up a public transport system and reduce cars on the road, the new public transport system must be essentially ran privately; one could easily claim that reducing cars on the road interferes with ExxonMobil's profits, and if all the railcars and maintenance is done by local private firms, it is attempting to benefit France unfairly.

If it's put into law, it's probably not an end of the world scenario, but this and the TTIP increase corporate control and make it harder for governments to regulate them, at the cost of us. So the corporations that already essentially control us will control us even harder

Damn, I thought this was going to be a thread where we would all try to help Reid overcome the difficulties of long-distance relationships, with his Asian girlfriend.

Lets be frank here, the beneficiaries of this are American investors, not some foreign bugbear. This is hardly the end of the world for you, an American. It is however an unprecedented expansion of the ability of multinational corporations to extract rents from the citizens of other countries.

I absolutely agree. One would oppose the TPP only if one holds onto the pretension that they are truly moral people. On the other hand, this partnership totally makes sense of the crazy bull markets we've had in the stock exchange, and makes me want to increase my retirement contributions.

uwotm8?

As usual, it's **** for the 99%, great for the 1%, and will be enacted without delay.

No, I do not want to mate. I just want a Trans-Pacific Partnership.

I hate it when people go ahead and prove that the communists were right about something with sh it like this. Ugh.

This has been in progress since at least 2010

hahaaa

If Marx is right, it won't last forever so at least that's good