The Washinton Consensus At The Base Of All “Free” Trade Agreements And Our Financial Elite

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years……It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.” David Rockefeller

“For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure–one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” David Rockefeller.

Yesterday at a first local Anti-TPPA meeting I met a gentleman who brought a term to my attention again and I thank him for that because it explains the mindset of John Key and his international masters to a T.

The term: The Washington Consensus, stands for the consensus over a series of points the global final elite has been pursuing since the mid eighties and which they hope will culminate in corporate global control with trade agreements such as the TPPA and the TTIP (The Atlantic side of the treaty). It is what is at the base of the entire NeoCon/Neoliberal coup we have been witnessing over the last 30 years and to which the NZ Labour party delivered us in the eighties and according to which National will deliver the final blow to this country if we let them sign the TPPA.

The term was coined first in 1989 By economist John Williamson, an economist from the Institute for International Economics who compiled the following 10 points.

1. Fiscal policy discipline, with avoidance of large fiscal deficits relative to GDP;
2. Redirection of public spending from subsidies (“especially indiscriminate subsidies”) toward broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary health care and infrastructure investment;
3. Tax reform, broadening the tax base and adopting moderate marginal tax rates;
4. Interest rates that are market determined and positive (but moderate) in real terms;
5. Competitive exchange rates;
6. Trade liberalization: liberalization of imports, with particular emphasis on elimination of quantitative restrictions (licensing, etc.); any trade protection to be provided by low and relatively uniform tariffs;
7. Liberalization of inward foreign direct investment;
8. Privatization of state enterprises;
9. Deregulation: abolition of regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition, except for those justified on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and prudential oversight of financial institutions;
10. Legal security for property rights.

I will not go into the analysis of the list today but I will go into the points one by one over the next 10 days to help connect them to the TPPA and it’s over reaching powers which will disable every democratic tool we, as a people, have at our disposal to make this a country for us and not for international corporations.