TPP Could Bring On Armageddon 3

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Thinking about my previous post, Joe Firestone: Another Danger of the TPP: It Sacrifices Monetary Sovereignity and taking into account Murphy’s Law, I started to wonder if signing the TPP could bring on Armageddon.

I decided to look up the major foreign holders of US Treasury securities.

Here is the Murphy’s Law scenario. Suppose we decide to devalue the dollar to bring our wage rates more in line with the countries where all our jobs are being outsourced. Supposing some of those countries decided to sue us before one of the tribunals established by the TPP. Their claim is that by devaluing our dollar, we will be harming their profits and the value of their holdings of our currency. It seems pretty obvious that their claim is true, and our sole purpose for taking that action is to take back some of those jobs and lower the value of our foreign debt.

So what could they sue us for? Japan holds $1.2 trillion of our foreign debt and will be one of the major signatories of the TPP. China holds another $1.2 trillion of our foreign debt. China will not be a signatory of TPP, but I bet they could buy lots of companies in countries that will be signatories. That would give them standing before one of the tribunals.

Rather than demanding immediate payment of $2.4 trillion, they could just hold us hostage and control our major policies.

I have come to a new understanding of Murphy’s Law. It is not just by chance that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. It is that if you give an adversary a brand new weapon that they could use against you, then they will use it. Do you want to hold your breath hoping they won’t? You could turn blue in the face just from that.

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3 thoughts on “TPP Could Bring On Armageddon”

  • SteveG Post author

    IMF COMMITTEE ON BALANCE OF PAYMENTS STATISTICS RESERVE ASSETS TECHNICAL EXPERT GROUP (RESTEG) ISSUES PAPER (RESTEG) # 2 CLARIFICATION OF FOREIGN CURRENCY

    The Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund state in Article XXX Section (f), that “A freely usable currency means a member’s currency that the Fund determines (i) is in fact, widely used to make payments for international transactions, and (ii) is widely traded in the principal exchange markets”

  • SteveG Post author

    Perhaps Joe Firestone is referring to IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) in which case his excitement (and mine) may be overblown.

    Although, maybe it isn’t SDRs. In the document Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty: Advanced Investment Chapter working document for all 12 nations (January 20, 2015 draft) – WikiLeaks release: March 25, 2015 you find items such as:

    Each Party shall permit transfers relating to a covered investment to be made in a freely usable currency at the market rate of exchange prevailing at the time of transfer.

    In case you are wondering what a “freely usable currency” is, just refer to this definition from the above WikiLeaks document.

    freely usable currency means “freely usable currency” as determined by the International Monetary Fund under its Articles of Agreement;

    There, don’t you feel better now that you know?

  • SteveG Post author

    Look at the total foreign holdings. A class action suit in one of the tribunals could put us on the hook for $6 trillion dollars.

    $6,000,000,000,000.00 if you don’t get the concept of trillions. For you computer geeks, that’s $6,000 teradollars.

    And that’s just foreign holders of our debt. Supposing the domestic holders of our debt decided to reincorporate as foreign corporations, then they could get in on the act. And Ross Perot thought he could imagine a giant sucking sound with NAFTA.