Karen Hansen-Kuhn on TPP, James Henry on HSBC

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This week on CounterSpin:  There’s plenty of opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But in corporate press accounts, the whole debate is reduced to battling soundbites. More useful and more interesting journalism would include getting outside the Beltway and talking to people about what the fallout from TPP and similar corporate-centered international agreements really looks like. We’ll fill in some of the picture with Karen Hansen-Kuhn, director of international strategies at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

HSBC protest (cc photo: Michael Fleshman)Also on the show: In all the media talk around newly confirmed Attorney General Loretta Lynch, her role as US attorney in brokering a deferred-prosecution agreement with HSBC when the bank was found guilty of money laundering for the likes of the Sinoloa drug cartel was hardly considered. This says something about Lynch–but also about media’s general lack of outrage about government support for big banks, no matter what crimes they commit. A few months back, CounterSpin spoke with journalist James Henry about more HSBC violations recently come to light — violations, it turns out, Loretta Lynch knew about when she worked on that deal.

And our usual look back at the week’s news.

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