General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFormer IMF Chief Economist, Simon Johnson: TPP: This Is Not About Ricardo
The Obama administration is lobbying hard for Congress to pass a trade promotion authority (TPA) and to quickly approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement that is on the verge of being finalized.
The administration and its supporters on this issue, including leading Republicans, argue that the case for TPP rests on basic economic principles and is only strengthened by the findings of modern research. On both counts their claims are greatly exaggerated – particularly with regard to the notion that more trade, on these terms, is necessarily better for the United States.
There is a strong theoretical and empirical case – dating back to David Ricardo in 1817 – that freer trade should make countries better off. However, modern-day trade agreements, including those currently being negotiated, are very different from earlier experiences with trade liberalization.
The TPP is not only – perhaps not even mostly – about freer trade, and thus who gains and who loses is very much dependent on what exactly are the details of the agreement. The exact nature of the provisions matters and at this point, because the TPP text is not available to the public, we cannot be sure whom this trade agreement will help or hurt within the United States or elsewhere.
Outside of agriculture, international trade is already substantially liberalized, and thus the gains from further reductions in tariffs are most likely limited by the fact that tariffs are already quite low.
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Given that these rules are secret (from us), we have no way of judging what is or is not in the TPP. Congress will vote soon on TPA, to greatly increase the odds of passing TPP, without there being first a proper public discussion of the TPP details. This is not a triumph of democracy – and it is not likely to lead to better economic policymaking.
http://baselinescenario.com/2015/05/21/the-trans-pacific-partnership-tpp-this-is-not-about-ricardo/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BaselineScenario+%28The+Baseline+Scenario%29
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nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)
Suffice it to say, this has far more in common with a certain tea company that his predecessor was critical off in a little known book called "the Wealth of Nations."
cali
(114,904 posts)And I learned a new word (though I guessed pretty accurately from knowing the word oligarchy)
An oligopoly (from ὀ?ί??? (olígos), meaning "few", and ????ῖ? (polein) , meaning "to sell"
is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists). Oligopolies can result from various forms of collusion which reduce competition and lead to higher prices for consumers.
Ricardo can be painful to read. Smith at least tried to go for somewhat clearer writing.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown is a 2010 book written by economist Simon Johnson and historian James Kwak.[1][2][3] According to economist C. Fred Bergsten, the book offers an analysis of the financial crisis of 2007–2009.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_Bankers
cali
(114,904 posts)Johnson is one of the co-founders along with a Professor Kwak Really great information, nifty resource.
The Baseline Scenario is dedicated to explaining some of the key issues in the global economy and developing concrete policy proposals. Since it was launched in September 2008, this blog has been cited by virtually every major newspaper, Internet site, and blog covering economic and financial issues. It has been cited as one of the best economics blogs multiple times, including twice by The Wall Street Journal. The authors of the blog have also published articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, BusinessWeek, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Democracy, and online in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg, Reuters, and The Huffington Post. The blog itself was the subject of an interview with Simon Johnson in The Wall Street Journal and an article in Economic Principals. Content from The Baseline Scenario is republished by many sites all over the Internet.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)upset, if we look back at that time when all the reports about how Paulson was demanding
with a 3 page letter how we have to do this, and now! They had that meeting where
the Senators and Pelosi came out gasping at what a disaster was coming?
Simon wrote this in May 2009, it was an eye opener:
The Quiet Coup
The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/
msongs
(67,394 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)<snip>
It is a stealth power grab, written in top-secret negotiations by and for multinational corporations from the U.S. and 11 other nations. This raw deal effectively empowers these profiteering corporate giants to overrule actions by the governments of any of these countries — including ours — that protect consumers, workers, the environment and other interests from corporate abuse.
This gift to the Trans-Pacific Titans is going to expand the rules of trade deals of the past such as NAFTA, WTO and Korea FTA. A few examples of what we have to look forward to with this bad deal the president is trying to polish and force onto the American people are: more offshoring of American jobs, which in turn leads to greater income inequality; higher costs for lifesaving and sustaining medicines; our environmental protections will be under threat of corporate attack; food and product safety regulations will be undermined; net neutrality will once again be challenged; Wall Street reform will be nothing but a memory; and say so long to “Buy American” initiatives.
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In April, under another trade agreement, his own administration was directed by a WTO tribunal to change — and essentially gut — a U.S. food-labeling law that dramatically reduced the killing of dolphins by commercial tuna-fishing fleets. Responding to public outrage over the mass slaughtering of the mammals, our Congress passed an effective dolphin-free law. But some tuna operations in Mexico complained using dolphin-free nets hurt their profits, and the WTO ordered our sovereign nation to surrender our law to the dolphin-killing Mexican profiteers.
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http://lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2015-05-22/hightower-tpp-hawking-obama-makes-ugly-display-presidential-petulance
djean111
(14,255 posts)The Dollar Tree I shop in most times is in the same shopping plaza as a Winn-Dixie. Dollar Trees do not carry refrigerated or frozen foods, but a small assortment of canned goods, pasta, beans, rice, spices, and condiments. They have a pretty good website that shows what they carry, and you can order cases of food or whatever. They sell a lot to very small businesses, mom and pop stores, like that.
Sometimes, given the size of a package, they might be more expensive than a grocery store, but if you only have $5 for food, better to be able to buy beans AND rice AND canned tomatoes AND cumin, for example, than to only be able to buy one or two of those things in a grocery store. You would kind of have to be/have been poor/money challenged to get that, perhaps. And recently they have been getting the excess, no room on the shelves for, bread from deliveries to grocery stores. Same sell-by dates, but, say, Cobblestone Mills for $1, instead of $3 or $4. (The "Family" store brand of bread they carry is kind of awful, by the way.) So - sometimes I could buy ingredients for a whole meal with the money it would take to buy a loaf of bread from a grocery store. Not a meal Gwyneth Paltrow would approve of, but, ya know, food.
Now, Winn-Dixie has won their case - they say that the Dollar Tree is cutting into their profits, so they, and any other store, who are operating in the same shopping plaza must not sell food. The Dollar Tree has taken out the food aisle, and is looking for another location.
Winn-Dixie is losing market share, IMO, because it is more expensive than Publix, except for some BOGOs. But now people with little money will either have to find another Dollar Tree or spend more of their money on fewer items at Winn-Dixie. Wave of the future? Get rid of any perceived competition?
