WikiLeaks Leaks A Chapter Of A Global Trade Agreement That Deals With Financial Deregulation

TISA is a global trade agreement that covers 50 countries and 68.2% of world trade in services, according to WikiLeaks.

The organization said in a press release that, "Despite the failures in financial regulation evident during the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis and calls for improvement of relevant regulatory structures, proponents of TISA aim for further deregulate global financial services markets."

Current World Trade Organization parties negotiating TISA include, the U.S., Japan, Australia, and the European Union's 28 member states.

A preliminary analysis of the leaked financial services chapter of TISA written for WikiLeaks by Jane Kelsey, a Law Professor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, argues that the financial industry has captured global rule making.

Kelsey writes that, "TISA is designed for and in close consultation with the global finance industry, whose greed and recklessness has been blamed for successive crises and who continue to capture rule making in global institutions."

Kelsey also argues that the leaked draft shows governments signing on to TISA will be expected to extend current levels of financial deregulation, face pressure to authorize potentially toxic insurance products, and risk a legal challenge if they adopt measures to preventing or responding to another crisis.

The full draft of TISA has not been released, and Kelsey notes that without the full text and background documents any analysis is necessarily tentative.

The draft text leaked today comes from the April round of negotiations, the sixth negotiation round held since the first meeting in April 2013.

The next round of negotiations will take place later this month in Geneva.