The Gee 20 and the “Partnership with Death”

Gee.

I guess I wasn’t paying attention to what went on with the G20 summit this weekend … other than the gawdawful traffic jam it caused Friday night when I was trying to get into town for a dinner.

But if Dick Morris has it right, the Bush Administration has bought into a global regulatory regime that could substitute international standards — in his view, “European socialism”– for US-driven ones.

And lo and behold, although the Gee 20 communique does make a brief bow to “free market principles,” it does contain some worrisome wordsmithing, to wit:

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With a view toward promoting financial stability, the governance of the international accounting standard setting body should be further enhanced, including by undertaking a review of its membership, in particular in order to ensure transparency, accountability, and an appropriate relationship between this independent body and the relevant authorities….

… Supervisors should collaborate to establish supervisory colleges for all major cross-border financial institutions, as part of efforts to strengthen the surveillance of cross-border firms. Major global banks should meet regularly with their supervisory college for comprehensive discussions of the firm’s activities and assessment of the risks it faces ….

… Authorities, drawing especially on the work of regulators, should collect information on areas where convergence in regulatory practices (emphasis added) such as accounting standards, auditing, and deposit insurance is making progress, is in need of accelerated progress, or where there may be potential for progress.

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I’m not quite as spooked as Morris, who with his typical understatement, fairly shrieks:

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The results of the G-20 economic summit amount to nothing less than the seamless integration of the United States into the European economy. In one month of legislation and one diplomatic meeting, the United States has unilaterally abdicated all the gains for the concept of free markets won by the Reagan administration and surrendered, in toto, to the Western European model of socialism, stagnation and excessive government regulation. Sovereignty is out the window. Without a vote, we are suddenly members of the European Union. Given the dismal record of those nations at creating jobs and sustaining growth, merger with the Europeans is like a partnership with death.

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C’mon, Dick! Don’t hold back. Tell us how you really feel.

I admit, however, that the situation bears watching. I mean, we didn’t need the G20 to introduce “European socialism” — it arrived the day that Godfather Paulson invited a group of leading bankers in for a little chat and informed them that their company’s shares or their brains would be on the table.

But as scary as that reality is, the prospect of all that power now passing into the hands of Prezelect Ich-bin-ein-Berliner-too, not to mention the All-Liberal team of Reid and Pelosi — and through their hands to multilateral regulators — is even more frightening.

Tags: bailout, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, G20, Harry Reid, multilateral agreements, Nancy Pelosi, socialism