Category Archives: Globalization

TransPacific Partnership: Fast Track to Financial Instability

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama said he would submit a bill to Congress that would grant him the fast track authority to finalize the TransPacific Partnership (TPP)—a trade pact with Pacific Rim countries such as Japan, Malaysia, Peru, and Chile. While free trade has brought benefits in the past, tariffs in the world economy are at an all time low and new deals like the TPP offer few new gains in terms of growth and jobs for the American people. And the TPP in particular comes at unacceptably high cost.

How Third Way Trade Agreements Study Distorts Via Omission to Pave Way for TTP and TTIP

Even cherry-picked data shows only modest gains for trade agreements, and more comprehensive looks tell a very different tale. And that’s before you get to all the nasty sovereignty-gutting provisions of the TTP and TTIP.

GXG: How the Scammers Behind Virgin Gold Mining Corporation Bit Off More Than They Could Chew (VI)

GXG Markets expels dubious broker London Capital (NZ)

Questus: How the Scammers Behind Virgin Gold Mining Corporation Bit Off More Than They Could Chew (V)

Here’s another New Zealand FSP scam, involving a “Malaysian billionaire”, who doesn’t look genuine, and princes from Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, who do look genuine!

How the Scammers Behind Virgin Gold Mining Corporation Bit Off More Than They Could Chew (IV)

The last piece in our series on Virgin Gold Mining Corporation, for the moment

How the Scammers Behind Virgin Gold Mining Corporation Bit Off More Than They Could Chew (III)

Yet more twists in the tale of the giant pyramid fraud, Virgin Gold Mining Corporation: Plan “C” starts to come unravelled.

How the Scammers Behind Virgin Gold Mining Corporation Bit Off More Than They Could Chew (II)

More shenanigans from Virgin Gold Mining Corporation and its little helpers.

How the Scammers Behind Virgin Gold Mining Corporation Bit Off More Than They Could Chew (I)

First in a series of posts exploring Virgin Gold, an immense ($2Bn?) pyramid scheme with a messy aftermath

Is Power8, Sponsor of Everton FC, Fulham FC and RCD Espanyol, a Giant Ponzi?

Yves here. Richard Smith is on the trail of what looks to be his biggest international scam find ever, orders of magnitude larger than the usual below the radar single to low double digit million dollar/pound/euro operation that he has ferreted out in the past. And mind you, even though he focuses on the dubious looking inter-corporate relationships and the often evident lack of normal investors protections and business substance, these companies sell hope and glamour to typically credulous retail investors who lose their money and have no recourse.

New Zealand’s Cathy Odgers Bungles Her Resignation From Pacific Fiduciaries

There’s no end in sight to Odgers’ inept duplicity: she can’t even tell the truth about her resignation from Pacific Fiduciaries

New Zealand’s Cathy Odgers and Fraud Stock HCI Hamilton: the Denouement

GXG Markets seem to agree with me about the apparent connection between Cathy Odgers’ Pacific Fiduciaries and an exceedingly obvious boiler room fraud, HCI Hamilton.

Is the TransPacific Partnership Being Brought Back From the Dead?

With a new Republican Congress, and Obama himself a Republican who occasionally wears Democratic clothing, the Administration is making noise that the TransPacific Partnership and its ugly sister, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, are moving forward in a serious way.

But the Administration tried that sort of messaging last year to keep up a sense of inevitability about these regulation-gutting, mislabeleed trade deals, when reality was very different. So where do things stand?

Bill Black: Obama’s Vain Search for a TPP “Legacy”

Yves here. This post confirms what readers know all to well, that Obama will use every opportunity to sell out the middle class to corporate interests.

One thing to bear in mind is that opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and its ugly sister, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, do not split on simply party lines. This fall, when Obama was unable to get enough votes to get “fast track” approval, which the Executive Branch uses to force an up-down vote on a final trade deal, denying Congress the opportunity to influence its contents, whip counts showed that nearly 40 Republicans in the House were prepared to join Democrats in opposing it. How the numbers would break now is an open question, but that means it is worth your time and effort to call your Congressman and let them know you are firmly opposed to these toxic trade deals.

Free Markets: Yellow Brick Road to War

Yves here. I’m a believer in synchronicity, and this post will allow readers to continue the discussion we’ve been having over the last few days about the forces for war versus peace in industrial and post industrial economies.

The author John Weeks does himself a disservice by letting his considerable frustration with how economics treats topics like trade and war descend into spurts of hyperventilation. However, I believe you’ll find his argument though-provoking. Some of his points include that analysis of trade assumes that countries, as opposed to companies, are the locus of activity, and that trade creates incentives for peace, when in fact trade just as often (if not more often) creates incentives for war, for instance, via competition for resources.