Here's our new Petition that I will publish on our Rally Congress page this weekend. Please add your comments on this thread ASAP. Trying to keep it short and sweet. Molly Goad did an excellent job with the editing and she included comments that were already sent to us. Thanks for your help. We want everyone to sign and send this new Petition and it should put out all new fires over the next month or two. ------------------------------------ Dear Congressman, I'm writing to kindly ask you to vote against any bill that includes a financial-transaction tax. Two bills in particular have proposed this tax as a way to pay for jobs recovery programs: âLet Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act of 2009â and âTransparent Markets Act of 2009.â Supporters view this tax as a way to generate tax revenue quickly, however, the tax's negative impact will be widespread, it will cause job losses, and it ultimately won't produce the tax revenue leaders are seeking. A transaction tax will stifle market makers which includes speculators and small-business traders. Market makers will trade less, markets will become illiquid, and spreads will widen significantly. All investors and hedgers will face lower selling prices and higher purchase prices, costing everyone more money. U.S. traders will seek better prices at financial centers abroad, and our financial exchanges will falter. As people trade less in the U.S., brokerages will be forced to close their doors. The technology sector, which services many exchanges, brokers, and traders, will consequently take a hit. It's also interesting to note that Wall Street â the group sponsors are targeting â most likely will pass the cost on to Main Street. Average citizens who had nothing to do with the last financial crisis will end up bearing the brunt of this tax. The tax revenue supporters predict the tax will generate is grossly inaccurate: As traders quit trading, there will be less transactions to tax, not to mention there will be less capital gains tax garnered from these traders. One bill includes narrow exemptions for small retail investors (first $100,000 of transactions) and for retirement plans, but business traders will blow through that amount very quickly. In addition to small investors, the technology industry, and our financial exchanges, farmers will suffer at the hands of this tax. Speculators bid up prices when needed to give farmers an incentive to plant more crops. If speculators are trading less, farmers will plant less. The tax will hurt their ability to hedge their products at a fair price. Sponsors claim it's a "tiny tax," but farmers consider it large enough to wipe out their narrow profit margins. Farmers running out of profits can lead to food shortages; no one wants that to happen. Some leaders have suggested this tax as a way to assist undeveloped countries in dealing with climate damage and for social causes. Those issues certainly need funding, however, the money should come from general contributions, not from a financial-transaction tax that will hurt both developed and undeveloped economies. The proposed financial-transaction tax will be implemented on all transactions â profitable and unprofitable. Traders already pay capital gains when they make money; how can the U.S. justify taxing traders when there's no income or profit on a transaction? The financial markets are one of our greatest assets and industries. It's clear this tax will cause an unpleasant chain of events that will negatively impact the economy; its effects will be felt everywhere. We can't allow this tax to succeed. Please help us defeat it by saying "NO" to any legislation that includes this tax. I thank you very much for your time and for considering these points. Sincerely, Robert A. Green
That sounds good, I cant sign though, in Canada, but even if this tax were to pass only in the US it would affect everyone, though not as much as the US of course. There has already been a letter sent by a few congressman to the ones that support it, maybe mention that in someway? Push for them to sign on as a sign of support.
Article on Defazio. It appears he is pissing off Obama and Rahm Emanuel. http://thehill.com/homenews/house/72889-pelosi-rahm-do-not-scare-rep-defazio
Comments needed to dispel the untruths. Funny how financial sites provide way too much of the proponent's views, and proponent sites offer none of our views in the article. Lawmakers Weigh A Wall Street Tax http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704247504574604053568517692.h
Final Copenhagen Text Includes Global Transaction Tax. I wonder if this means Obama can simply bypass Congress, and push us into this global transaction tax? Unbelievable!!! http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=...gen-text-includes-global-transaction-tax.html
There's a new WSJ article on the trans tax. It concludes with the following statement: But Mr. DeFazio's bill would tax transactions by U.S. citizens no matter where they occur. To escape the tax, he says, people would have to move their citizenship, not just their money. I've read the bill and do not see where this language exists. Can someone please tell me what I'm missing, or is this just another misleading article? The article also hints as exemptions for hedgers: The tax could even hit businesses such as airlines that engage in futures and derivatives trading to hedge against commodity-price spikes. Already, there is talk of carving out exemptions for them. Link to article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704247504574604053568517692.html
This link shoud work: "Lawmakers Weigh A Wall Street Tax" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704247504574604053568517692.html "The trading tax isn't likely to become law in the immediate future. But "there is considerable support for it" among Democrats, says Rep. George Miller (D., Calif.), who adds that the tax also is "very much" on the table for deficit reduction next year. The tax would raise an estimated $150 billion a year." I don't like the sound of that. I believe Obama's next FY budget is due sometime in February so this will need to be monitored. It also talks about the Senate version of the bill (Harkin's version) planning to exempt pension plans and carving out exemptions for businesses that hedge (airlines, etc). -Guru
Take the source of this article for what its worth. I wouldnt say yet that it mentions global taxes in any draft I have seen. This says provisions are in there for a global tax, which in the draft we have seen could mean when they say alternative financing - that could mean a whole lot. So this website has been exaggerating thigs this week.
A lot of good points against the tax are brought up in the piece by UK based organization 'The Taxpayers Alliance' posted by someone earlier on the thread. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=150546&perpage=6&pagenumber=694 (Last post on this page) One more important thing worth mentioning is that the crisis was caused not by short-term trading but by banks having made highly leveraged risky loans. The transaction tax does not adress the issue of the Margin Call which was at the heart of the financial crisis 2008: the entire banking system got the Margin Call. Below is the excerpt from the article: Tobin tax doesnât address the causes of the financial and economic crisis. Its root cause was simply that too many big banks were too exposed to unreliable mortgage loans. When a housing bubble in the United States burst, those banks got into huge trouble and taxpayersâ money was used on a huge scale to keep many of them afloat. Reducing the number of financial transactions at any point wouldnât have changed anything (and many mortgage CDOs were held for long periods, not constantly traded).