Any opinions of all the WTO news?

[corpfan1]

Hey,

Any opinions oi all the WTO news lately? How 'good' is it really?

Supposedly, the EU, India and Japan have all joined Antigua with filing claims.

Also, Antigua is now requestion $3.4 BILLION per annum from the US as damages.

Any thoughts?

[Beanie]

its certainly encouraging.

[scrawnybob]

the interesting thing is from the way I read some of the articles on the EU bit is that whilst the illegality of the UIGEA may well be upheld as against international trade laws

it's the solution that IMHO sucks

basically the EU will be seeking compensation on the amount of trade lost being replaced in business from relaxing other trade issues

ie. the poker industry loose x $'s so this could be made up with x $'s being allocated / traded in some other totally non poker business - crazy

thats bad for the real victims - the poker industry

but the EU dont care so long as the lost $$'s come back from selling something totally different -

as I see it thats like saying the US banned importing widgets from my widget shop in the UK and instead of them having to let US customers buy widgets from me and compensate for lost widget sales

the EU are happy to accept compensation by buying the same value in UK gizmos

Thats great for gizmo sellers - but they werent the ones who had there business f8cked over in the first place

Damn trade laws seem to be interested only on a macro scale and not on actually compensating or restoring the actual losses to actual business sector

I have some other analogy's but I'll save them for my blog post on it

cheers scrawnybob