In addition, the executive director of the MTN Coalition is Harry Freeman, the former AmEx executive vice president who played the starring role in a bizarre scheme to discredit an AmEx competitor and who remains close to the company and to Robinson. Joan Spero, AmEx treasurer and special vice president for international corporate affairs, chairs CSl's Financial Services Group. AmEx has been through the trade-talks exercise before. Following completion of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, AmEx was granted bank status in Canada, despite much opposition from Canadians. In criticizing the decision to allow AmEx to become a Canadian bank, as well as the deregulation of Canadian banking overall, Ottawa political economy professor Duncan Cameron argued that it is a mistake to treat money as a commodity like any other.
Money embodies human relationships.
Bankers orchestrate social change. Cameron and other Canadians are not eager to have their society shaped by a stateless corporation whose interest in Canada is the same as its interest in Poland, the Third World or other markets. As it turns out, AmEx's interest generally is in serving the most affluent sector of the countries in which it operates. The same is true of textile workers, who fear the end of their industry in the United States. But when American Express Company, pursuing its fortune in a world without frontiers, favors what it calls free trade, especially in financial services, people listen.