No offense to any German's on this board but I've never been happier to hear them say anything than I have been today.
Report on our Petition: Save Traders' Jobs: Do Not Enact a Financial-Transaction Tax at http://www.rallycongress.com/greentradertax-traders-association1. Great news, itâs being signed and sent to Congressman several times per minute the past 24 hours. Thatâs a material escalation over an already great start since I published the Petition on Nov. 24, the day before the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Thanks to important players in the trading industry (including Elite Trader) and all traders for spreading the word about our Petition for saving and creating jobs and not allowing new tax increases to kill jobs on Main Street. The Comments on the Petition are fantastic and very helpful. I noticed that several signers of our Petition live in the home districts of the financial-transaction tax billsâ lead sponsors - Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR 4th district), Congressman Ed Perlmutter (D-CO 7th district, and Congressman John Larson (D-CT 1st district). I sent the below email to everyone who signed the petition in those districts, asking them to help our cause further by writing a letter to their local newspapers. Why not take action like Speaker Pelosi does in a Congressmanâs home district (see a prior post of mine on that)? Here is an example. Kindly do the same if you live in any of the other bill sponsors districts too. Dear x: Thanks for signing our Petition: Save Traders' Jobs: Do Not Enact a Financial-Transaction Tax. http://www.rallycongress.com/greentradertax-traders-association1 Hope you don't mind me emailing you with a request for a favor to help our joint cause. I noticed that you live in Congressman John Larson's CT district #1 http://www.larson.house.gov/. You signing the petition and sending a letter to Congressman Larson and others in your district and state is extra helpful to our cause. Thank you. Please permit me to suggest another idea too: Can you write a Letter to the Editor of your local newspaper(s)? You can simply use our Petition letter and add your insights about how Congressman Larson, your local Congressman is causing this tax increase fury nationwide with his "Transparent Markets Act" (H.R. 3153) proposal http://www.larson.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=990&Itemid=20 and his related support of stock tax bills from Congressmen DeFazio and Perlmutter. Include how Larson's tax increase and jobs proposal will actually cause net job losses in his home district, which is far from Wall Street. Plus, it will cause lots of job losses in neighboring CT district #4 Fairfield County, home to most hedge funds and banks who left Wall Street and moved to Stamford for a better tax and business environment. This will no longer be the case with CT's recent shocking rise in the upper income tax rates on a retroactive basis. The financial services sector is one of the top jobs providers and taxpaying industries in all of CT. Each (good paying) financial service job supports many other jobs too, like professional and personal services, retail, food and beverage, construction, and much more. If you revisit our Petition page, you will see lots of other good comments too. This is the same tactic used by Speaker Pelosi. She strikes at the local-district support of a Congressman that she is trying to influence with her viewpoints. Speaker Pelosi also contacts the Congressman's donors to get the message through that way too. If you can help our cause further as suggested, please let me know about it and show me the published letters in the newspapers (online). Thank you very much for your help. Take care, Robert A. Green, CPA CEO GreenTraderTax Traders Association Here are the latest Petition numbers: 3,608 People Have Sent 7,935 Letters and Emails California: 587 16.7% Florida: 324 9.2% Texas: 290 8.2% New York: 255 7.2% Illinois: 166 4.7% Arizona: 125 3.6% Colorado: 112 3.2% Ohio: 110 3.1% Oregon: 58 1.6%** Notice that NY and IL, home of major financial exchanges only represent fewer than 12%. This Petition is proof that itâs a Main Street issue and not Wall Street and downtown Chicago. **Every single state has signers and the others are between just under 1 to 2+ %.
Great, we appear to be winning current consensus this week in the U.S., since the tide was turned last Friday with Secretary Geithnerâs clarification remarks, and after Speaker Pelosiâs flip-flop. But remember, every time we get a little comfortable, someone comes out of left-field with another bombshell in the media, both here in the U.S. and globally, this week with global climate talks in Europe - with talk of a global currency tax on financial-transactions. Anyone can pick any instrument (currency in this case), but itâs then only a matter of time until they say it must cover all financial instruments so there is no leakage. The same concept of leakage applies to requiring all or most countries to pass a coordinated financial transaction tax too. Thatâs a very tall task in my view, but we need to fight it at every juncture, in the U.S. and worldwide. The fact is that these financial-transaction tax proposals are still on the table in Congress, in the UK, EU and other countries too. We need to keep pressing until they are fully dropped from any current US tax bills. Even then we are not safe, because I expect many more legislative opportunities for this tax in early 2010. Until we go through final conference sessions between the House and Senate, you never know what can show its ugly head last minute. Plus, the debate and politics on these issues in the UK are even more heated with the elections scheduled for around April 2010. By continuing our joint efforts to pound the table (and every media story comment section) to defend Main Street traders and investors and differentiate ourselves from big banks and bonus recipients on Wall Street, we will help not only this narrow tax cause, but the bigger general tax and business causes for investors and traders. The public has relied on many misconceptions of traders for a long time and that needs to be corrected once and for all. We donât want traders and investors to be the preferred whipping boys for tax increases on all fronts. Itâs way too early to send our protest buses home. Keep up our social media Million Man March.
I used to live in Colorado and am embarassed about the Rep Ed Perlmutter. David Harsanyi a columnist for the Denver Post wrote this article a few weeks ago: http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_13875881 I emailed him about it to give him more info and he did respond to me. So if anyone else wants to email him, his email is dharsanyi@denverpost.com
I echo that, great job GreenTradertax. I would like to make one suggestion to everyone though, and that would be for us to downplay the "save traders' jobs" aspect of our argument. Honestly, no one on main street cares about traders, and I think it actually weakens our case when we try to invoke some sort of sympathy for our tiny segement of the population. We need to impress upon our representatives that this tax is bad for EVERYONE, period ... and not that we're just out here trying to save our own jobs as traders, which according to some is of questionable social purpose anyway. Thanks; carry on.
A job is a job. If the traders go, there will be a cascading effect on other jobs. Anyone who thinks this is just about saving traders is ignorant. I know personally I spend a small fortune on data fees. If this tax goes into effect, my data provider gets hurt and people will lose their jobs.
The DeFazio bill has been referred to the House Ways and Means Committee. "We have no plans at this time to hold hearings on the bill," said Matthew Beck, a spokesman for the committee. That is a very recent statement from House Ways and Means regarding the new defazio bill HR 4191 This article is from today traders magazine. http://www.tradersmagazine.com/news/transaction-tax-wall-street-104707-1.html
Obviously. But some in Washington want a tax to pay for creation of "real jobs", and if it costs a few jobs at the "casino", so be it. Trust me, I'm on your side. I just know that's how DeFazio and his ilk think.