No. It's your "head in the sand" that is sad. I said nothing of a "tax imposed by Odumbo", rather the principle of "rule by fiat executive order". You don't "get it" at all. I "don't dislike Obama". I H-A-T-E HIS FUCKING ASS!!! (I've "HATED" only 2 people in my entire life... the other beat me as a step child.) In some ways Odumbo's worse than HITLER! My "add to the conversation"... is that a corrupt and evil president can circumvent the constitution to promote his own agenda if the "checks and balances" of the Constitution are ignored. You know, like monarchs do... or DICTATORS!!
Are you suggesting market were better 30 yrs ago? The markets possibly offered more edges because the market was smaller and less technologically advanced. Humans did the jobs computers do now. There was order flow for locals to trade etc. But a financial transaction tax will NOT change this. It will just make trading insanely expensive for us all. The edges will still be exploited by technology because information is still infinitely cheaper and more readily available than back in the day. If you want the markets of 30 years ago we are talking banning computer trading and going back to floor trading. Again FTT will not change that. I am no fan of HFT firms but i'm fairly indifferent to them. There are plenty of edges in the market still, many of them created by HFT's and their exploitable patterns if you know what to look for. But raising trading costs just ruins it for everyone. HFT's, locals, hedgers, pensions etc etc
Edges exploited by technology are temporary. There are edges that were around 100 years ago and the odds favor them being around in another 100 years.
Without sounding too callous.. how old is Bernie? Surely if it came to the crunch people will realise that having a President whos job will involve huge pressures, lots of travel etc as he approaches 80 years old is not at all practical.
Name ONE edge that isn't eroded by technology? I'm not even talking short term patterns.. even medium term and longer term patterns in the market can be searched for and traded by computers hundreds of times faster than it would take a human to even conceive of the trading idea.
All of the fun in this game is finding those edges. Why would I prevent someone else from enjoying that process?
There are zero edges that wouldn't be significantly impeded by a FTT unless you are talking about a trading approach that is very low volume. Anything less than one trade a day is investing in my book