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Fair Trade Archive: GTW E-Newsletters, Action Alerts, and Updates

WTO Financial Services Agreement

Around the world, there are calls for expansive new global financial services regulations to address the current global economic crisis. But there is a seeming total lack of awareness that most of the world's countries are bound to expansive World Trade Organization (WTO) financial services deregulation requirements. These terms locked in domestically, and exported internationally, the model of extreme financial service deregulation that most analysts consider a prime cause of the current crisis. Deregulation (not only liberalization) of the financial service sector – including banking, insurance, asset management, pension funds, securities, and more – is among the most important, but least discussed, aspects of the WTO.

For more information:

• Report: No Meaningful Safeguards for Prudential Measures in WTO Financial Service Deregulation Agreements
• Fact Sheet: Trade and Financial Re-regulation (PDF)
• Policy Primer: The WTO and the Global Economic Crisis (PDF)

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