If TPP is so good for us, why does Wall Street pay negotiators millions in bonuses?

[Octafish]

For Services Rendered? Wall Street’s Big Paydays For Trade Negotiators

by Richard Eskow
Published on Friday, February 28, 2014 by Campaign for America's Future Blog

EXCERPT...

Here’s one possible answer: You negotiate trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the new pact that the administration is currently trying to ram through Congress. A recent report confirms that some of the officials crafting this latest agreement were paid handsomely by the Wall Street institutions that stand to benefit from it.

As the United States trade representative, Michael Froman has primary responsibility for the TPP. A new investigation from Republic Report reveals that Froman received more than $4 million in payouts from his then-employer Citigroup as he was leaving to join the Obama administration.

SNIP IMPORTANT STUFF...

The New York Times reports that Froman also had a half-million dollars in a Cayman Island account managed by Citigroup, which used the infamous Ugland House tax dodge. This modest building houses more than 18,000 legal entities. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) called Ugland House “the biggest tax scam in the world.”

Froman also reportedly invested in funds that took advantage of the “carried interest” loophole. It’s a political embarrassment for an administration appointee to profit from tax deals that the White House opposes. Perhaps that’s why Citigroup also paid him a multimillion-dollar bonus to cash out of these funds.

Consider the sequence of events. First, the taxpayers created Citigroup, then it shafted the taxpayers. And meanwhile, its CEO has been trying to convince Americans that their government can’t afford to pay Social Security benefits or pay for other important programs, through his membership in the Wall Street front group known as “Fix the Debt.”

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/28-5