by Maurizio d'Orlando

Pushed by Obama and a US-EU working group, the new union should set down new rules favouring corporate globalisation. However, its economic advantages are few unless the dollar, the Euro, the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank become one.

Milan (AsiaNews) - Ordinary Europeans and Americans might wonder what popular sovereignty really means. The rest of the world, especially Asian nations, might ask themselves what impact the ongoing economic realignments and restructuration will have on them. What realignments? Those that in a short interval of time should lead to a single world currency and a single world government. This at least appears to be what US President Barack Obama and unelected European Union officials had in mind when they agreed to a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. President Obama referred to it in his State of the Union address on 12 February. The United States-European Union High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth (HLWG) spoke about it the day before.

As its name indicates, the high-level but little known working group has friends in high places if its suggestions are taken up by America's chief executive officer. The same cannot be said about the citizens of the oldest parliamentary democracies in the world who appear oblivious to a political plan whose aims and boundaries are still unclear. Officially, the joint report does indicate the reasons behind the working group[1], economics. Together, the United States and the European Union generate about 50 per cent of the world GDP and represent 30 per cent of world trade.

Why is such a transatlantic partnership needed? The report suggests the following reasons:

1)      more open markets on both sides,

2)      the elimination of "behind the border" non-tariff barriers,

3)      enhanced compatibility of regulations and standards,

4)      enhanced cooperation for the development of common rules and principles for private and public sector enterprises to counter economic localism and expand business globalisation to include also small and medium-sized companies.

Such an ambitious project would however drastically curtail the authority of elected parliaments. Establishing 'common rules and principles' in fact would mean creating another layer of power. Many supranational rules already exist, issued by unelected bodies like the European Commission, the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation, to name just a few; under the new system, there would be more committees to coordinate and control this new transatlantic alliance. Parliaments in representative democracies would be virtually stripped of all their prerogatives in the economic sphere.

In exchange of such major limitations on democracy and the rights of elected parliaments, proponents of such an partnership claim that there would be major economic benefits. However, a paper by the European Commission[2] suggest that any net benefit that might be generated (and that is still uncertain and unproven) would correspond to 0.5 per cent of the EU's GDP, slightly less for the United States. In view of this paltry figure, other initiatives could provide better opportunities for economic growth. It is therefore hard to believe that greater economic development is the goal of a new transatlantic alliance.

It is easier to believe that a transatlantic common market is the launching pad for a Euro-American currency that would replace the dollar and the Euro. A Euro-American economic block can only exist if it has fixed exchange rates or it would fall apart. And a fixed dollar-Euro exchange rate is just a short step from a single currency and a single Euro-American central bank.

Of course, this sounds like science fiction or economic fantasy, but the collapse of the existing system is already underway. In fact, we might even foresee a time when this could happen, this spring for example, after market shares take another major plunge[3].

The same is true for central banks. The Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are overflowing with so many toxic assets (that cannot be unloaded at any price) that they cannot survive as independent bodies.

Thus, we can surmise that what lies behind this transatlantic alliance is a plan to merge currencies and central banks. The closer we look, the more we see the two-ECB and the Fed-acting as publicly traded companies. Since the two are private entities, that is what they appear to be doing. The two also operate in the same field and exercise sovereign power to issue money with legal tender under a regime of monopoly.

Since 2007[4], AsiaNews has examined on several occasions plans to introduce a new currency as the prelude to a single world currency. All indications are that this will be done very soon.

For us, the countries that will hang onto their national independence and sovereignty will be the lucky ones, for the disasters of monetary and economic centralisation in Europe are there for all to see.

[1] See the Final Report of the High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth and the Fact Sheet of the Office of United States Trade Representative.

[2] See the joint Memorandum by the United States and the European Union, "European Union and United States to launch negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership," Brussels, 13 February 2013.

[3] See Maurizio d'Orlando, "As the world's monetary system inches its way towards collapse, winds of war sweep Asia," in AsiaNews, 5 February 2013. See other articles by the same author in AsiaNews .

[4] See ibid, "Subprime lending to trigger world's worst financial crisis since 1929," in AsiaNews, 19 September 2007. The reference here is to news about the Amero, North America's new currency.

• united
• states
• european
• union
• transatlantic
• union