Wall Street doesn't care, as they will get exempted from the tax. This tax would only apply to the small time retail traders, who had nothing to do with causing this financial crisis. Of course, these douche bag Democrats will spin this as going after Wall Street, and get the country to buy into it, but in the end, it will have absolutely nothing to do with going after Wall Street at all.
This is getting out of hand with these bs studies. There is no way this tax will take in much (if any revenue) let alone 150b or 353b. We need to come up with some sort of study of our own showing what would happen if this tax were enacted. Volume would tank and with all these exemptions that would have to happen the net revenue would most likely be negative. Hopefully the IMF will come out with something hugely in our favor. Once the general public sees these huge numbers it's an easy sell to them. Let's just hope that were able to fight this bs off. -Guru
The tax will devastate Wall Street and they care deeply about fighting it off too. Their high speed trading business is over with this tax. Wall Street's hands have been tied on banker bonuses, so they are slower going on this tax fight front. They also got word, the exchange chairman said that Congress gave him assurances no way on this tax. So maybe they are saving their powder here. I don't think there will be an exemption for Wall Street dealers in their prop trading accounts (not dealing). That would lay off the tax on the little guy on Main Street and there would be an uproar over it. The whole selling tool of this tax is to apply it to rich Wall Street firms in the first place. NY Gov. Patterson will try to block it and he was clear on this already. I expect Mayor Bloomberg (not sure if he spoke out yet) will also do everything possible to block it. His empire will lose a ton of revenue if traders are forced out of business. Junior Senator Gillibrand spoke out against the tax and she must have coordinated this with downstate Senator Schumer too. While it's held in abeyance pending the IMF report, economists will publish eye catching reports of huge revenues and some will lick their chops over it. We are stuck defending it at every juncture, with real threat or not. The media loves to spin this story. It folds into their global tax climate story too.
This study by Baker, et al, is more than likely a response to our efforts to show how a tax would cut daily volume by half or more and how even with this tax proposal, the gov't can still capture significant revenues. This is obviously a counter argument to our successful efforts to discredit such tax talk and possibly a "shoot for the moon and settle for something, anything" mentality, like what DeFuzzybear said about we're just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing if something sticks. We need to adjust our arguments.
sorry I was rushing to a call before and left out the below, which I added back in. I don't think there will be an exemption for Wall Street dealers in their prop trading accounts (not dealing). That would lay off the tax on the little guy on Main Street and there would be an uproar over it. The whole selling tool of this tax is to apply it to rich Wall Street firms in the first place. Most laws, including Section 475 MTM, are applied differently to dealers versus traders. Wall Street has to designate what is dealing versus trading. They make most of their profits these days on trading, the same as all of you. No way no how can they be exempt from a trader tax if enacted for traders. Again, there may be a narrow exemption for dealing only. I don't think the US will follow the exact way the UK does the stamp duty tax and exempts banks in general. For all these reasons, a trader tax will bury the NYC economy, much worse than any terrorist attack. Odd that America has forgotten all that and is so quick to cast NYC aside. Same goes for Chicago. There is no need for the financial services industry to splinter and fight this tax separately and laying it off on each other. That may divide and conquer us. Let's fight it together. We don't need to trash Wall Street over this.
Bottom line is the entire world is waiting on the IMF at this point. I just can't see the IMF flip flopping on this issue after they came out against the tax sternly after the G20 meeting (both the top (2) guys at the IMF). I think the fact that they are now studying it was mostly to appease the Europeans. It would be best for us if the IMF came out against the tax in their report with some concrete reasons as to why this tax won't work, etc. It looks pretty solid that Gordon Brown is going to be out of office next year. This tax would have to be coordinated internationally which I just can't see happening (we all seen what happened in Copenhagen). I'm sure there's plenty of action going on behind the scenes to kill this tax and IMHO I will think those efforts will be successful. If this tax were enacted WallStreet would be a ghost town and tax revenues would sink. -Guru
How about Market Markers? they will get a big spread between bid and ask when retail traders are gone. With or w/o the exemption, they are likely to get a windfall?
I was thinking about 9/11 about an hour ago and don't they remember? DeFazio and his tactic of 0.25 for stocks and 0.02 for futures perhaps as an attempt to cause infighting.
We need to drill down more about dealer, versus trader, versus other forms etc if any. Not sure I am the biggest expert on that, so please others help out here too. Let's not discuss trader tax exemptions too much, because we should simply not allow them at all. With ECNs, small business traders are market markers and they deserve as much exemption as anyone. Even the banks credit them with much of the liquidity. If we allow any type of exemption, we will lose if it happens. The bill writers will exempt retirement plans and very small retail investors. If the big banks are exempted, the government can wipe out the speculator trader, who they have their sites on. They need banks for loans and the system, they think they can do without the little guy market maker and they are wrong. More needs to be written here and a few have discussed this point well. Killing off the little guy market maker is un-American and prejudice. The speculator ECN trader is the same as Wall Street these days. Keep pinning our tail to Wall Street and we will win. A loser Congressman like DeFazio in Obama's woodshed is not going to take down Wall Street over this dumb tax idea. So we fight one and for all. We fight for the little retail investor, because the exemption written is a mirage. They pay higher prices. If this tax ever happens, many of you may be able to trade in retirement plans too, even with UBIT issues, which are not a big deal. I've written about this on my retirement pages. No "selective" discriminatory taxation without representation. Wall Street is represented and so are mutual funds and retirement plans. Those are the big firms. We can't let our middle layer be unrepresented and discriminated against.