[CTC] Presbyterian Alert on TRADE Act

[Andrew Gussert]

A Conference Call For State and Local Officials

*Provision in Senate Financial Reregulation Bill Would Empower Preemption of State Insurance Regulations that Conflict with Trade Agreements!*

Even though the regulatory failures that caused the financial crisis can be traced to federal agencies, the U.S. Senate bill ostensibly aimed at reregulating financial firms includes provisions that could undermine state regulators and existing state insurance regulation. The financial reregulation package just passed out of the Senate Banking Committee contains measures that would newly empower the Treasury Department to unilaterally determine that state insurance rules violate international agreements and preempt such states policies.

*Join Maine Superintendent Mila Kofman and Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch director Lori Wallach for a conference call on April 6 at 1:30 p.m. EDT [ http://action.citizen.org/t/10608/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=28245 ] to learn about this urgent problem and what we can do to ensure that the Senate passes comprehensive financial regulatory reform "without creating a ceiling on state insurance regulation".*

The latest version of the "Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010" - sponsored by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) - calls for the establishment of a new Office of National Insurance (ONI) within the Department of Treasury that would be granted bold new preemption authority with respect to state insurance policies. This new agency would be empowered to negotiate international agreements on insurance and preempt state insurance policies that the agency unilaterally determines conflict with the terms of international agreements. Effectively, this proposal would create a new ceiling on state regulation based on international standards the new agency would negotiate behind closed doors without Congressional approval!

Join our conference call [ http://action.citizen.org/t/10608/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=28245 ] to discuss how to fix this urgent problem in the coming weeks before the final bill is passed.

Date: Tuesday, April 6
Time: 1:30 p.m. EDT
Speakers:
Mila Kofman, Maine Superintendent of Insurance
Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch

Click here to RSVP [ http://action.citizen.org/t/10608/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=28245 ] or contact Sarah Edelman at sedelman at citizen.org [ mailto:sedelman at citizen.org?subject=Conference%20Call%20RSVP ].


About GTW [ http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=3147 ]
Contact Public Citizen [ http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=2330 ]

If you do not wish to receive e-mail messages from Public Citizen in the future, please click here: [ http://action.citizen.org/unsubscribe.jsp ].

Copyright © 2010 Public Citizen. All Rights Reserved
215 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, 3rd Floor | Washington, DC 20003
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20100326/6a0c12e1/attachment-0002.htm>