Suchergebnisse

Reading the GATS as ideology -- How the GATS was won (and lost?) -- Trade-related development -- The illusion of public services -- Ruling the services infrastructure -- Trade in people -- Minds and markets -- Dominion over the Earth-- Energy wars

ABSTRACT
The launch of 'Joint Statement Initiatives' (JSI) on electronic commerce, investment facilitation, and domestic regulation of services by groups of mainly developed country members in 2017 aimed to reinvigorate the World Trade Organization's negotiating arm. These plurilateral negotiations to produce new rules that might be applied on a most-favoured-nation basis have been justified with a pragmatic blend of political, ideological, and legal arguments. This strategy directly challenges the World Trade Organization's (WTO) core tenets of multilateralism, Member-driven consensus decision-making, and special and differential treatment, and sidelines the WTO's role to mandate negotiations and its established bodies. Developing countries have challenged the systemic implications of JSIs for their ability to advance their own priorities, as was promised when the WTO was established. This article shows why JSIs lack legal legitimacy and their adverse systemic implications with reference to the WTO's founding principles and its legal rules. It finds the justifications for JSIs rely on tenuous interpretations of WTO rules and the preferred mode of implementation involves a misuse of trade in services schedules. It warns that the precedent set by these JSIs would license future rule making by self-selecting groups of Members on a potentially limitless range of matters and deepen existing fissures within the troubled WTO.

Currencies, exchange rate mechanisms and monetary policy are intrinsically political. Throughout the 20th century they have been constantly renegotiated in response to periodic economic, social and political crises. Those who advocate the depoliticization of monetary policy through central bank independence, and the more radical denationalization of currencies through dollarization and monetary union, aim to bring that history to an end and quarantine money from the control of governments, permanently. Critical theorists tend to treat these three techniques separately. This article seeks to understand their common ideological premises through the writings of three prominent advocates: Kurt Schuler, Robert Mundell and F. A. Hayek. When all three monetary regimes are re-embedded in the social, economic and political context in which they operate, deep contradictions emerge. These manifest in different ways in different national contexts, reflected in examples as diverse as `convertibility' in Argentina and European Monetary Union. The article concludes that such regimes are ultimately unsustainable, and challenges the belief that global capitalism can thrive in a social, cultural and political void that attempts to quarantine itself permanently from the contradictions it creates.

The idea that New Zealand should abandon its national currency in favour of the US or Australian dollar, or create a new shared currency with Australia, has gained momentum in recent years. Denationalisation of the currency would crown almost two decades of radical neo-liberal restructuring by placing many of those achievements beyond the reach of future governments. Despite this, there is considerable reticence from the economic and political architects of the 'New Zealand Experiment' (Kelsey,1997) who believe that other monetary regimes are inferior to their own. Paradoxically, there has been more support from the political leadership of the current Third Way government, led by the New Zealand Labour Party, which is attracted by the prospect of deeper integration into the global economy through monetary union with Australia. While the Prime Minister talks in terms of monetary union, almost all commentators concede that the effect for a small, open economy like New Zealand's would be no different from the more coercive option of dollarisation. The first section of the paper traces the emergence of all three strategies over the past two decades. During the initial phase, monetary policy was refocused exclusively on price stability and national monetary authorities were insulated from government control. The second phase, which has gained momentum in the 1990s aims to remove monetary authority beyond the political reach of the nation state, permanently. The paper argues that these theories perpetuate the grand delusion of neo-liberalism - that global capitalism can thrive in a social, cultural and political void and permanently quarantine itself from the contradictions it creates. Money is not simply a commodity. Nor are national currencies merely the symbols of a (presumed) national identity. In an economic system of commodity capitalism, money is the medium for exercising power. It serves as the means of payment, store of value and unit of account, and as a commodity in its own right. Monetary policy is the vehicle through which national governments control the creation of money and influence its value so as to distribute resources between competing interests, whether capital and labour, diverse regions or different countries. This makes currencies, exchange rate mechanisms and monetary policies intrinsically political. Their forms have been highly contested throughout the twentieth century and renegotiated in response to periodic economic, social and political crises. Dollarisation and monetary union aim to bring this history to an end and permanently privilege the owners of capital. The attempt to remove the power of government over economic policy heightens the risks of social disintegration and political implosion in an often highly fractured society. As the theory is increasingly transformed into practice, these tensions are emerging more clearly. The final section of the paper draws on Argentina's experience under a currency board and European Monetary Union to assess the implications for New Zealand.