There are relatively weak GATS rules in place now, but ongoing negotiations between nations under corporate influence to tighten them and apply them to more and more services raise serious concerns.

What might a strengthened GATS mean for the United States? It's too early to say with certainty, but based on a careful analysis of existing proposals, Professor Patricia Arnold of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has raised a set of disturbing questions:

· Will GATS weaken efforts to regulate financial markets in the aftermath of the financial and accounting scandals? Already foreign companies are complaining about the reach of the modest Sarbanes-Oxley accounting reform bill, which would require foreign, as well as U.S. CEOs, if they sell stock on the New York Stock Exchange, to attest personally to the validity of their companies' financial statements.

· If Wall Street gets its way and achieves a partial privatization of Social Security, will GATS make it impossible ever to bring the program back fully into the public sector? GATS requires countries to pay compensatory damage if they grant new public rights over the supply of a service, she notes, making privatization a one-way street.