leo hindrey on bloomberg tv right now "as the health care debate dies down the debate on the transaction tax will rise" UGH info on hindrey here http://www.intermediaadvisors.com/m...StaticContent&screenKey=cmpAbout&s=interMedia they may put the video up later today he said harkin introduces senate version of trans tax bill tomorrow
I think we are going to have to get used to such questions. And we need to be ready for the debate ahead, as such questions will come up again. We can give facts about the higher costs for investors in the 1960s, describe how such taxes were a failure when introduced in other countries such as Sweden... Fortunately our case is strong...whenever it is said that 'the UK has such a tax and this is not devastating' we say "but the UK tax exempts market makers at banks...is that what you are proposing?? Because if it is then you are NOT making Wall Street pay for Main Street and the claims about revenue generated are also untruths and deliberately misleading...Are you deliberately trying to mislead Main Street? Have you thought this through?" Some who support this idea have spoken plainly that one of the goals is to deliberately shrink the size of the finance sector relative to the economy. Perhaps here we need to re-emphasize the fact that they are proposing to DELIBERATELY SHRINK THE ECONOMY...Do the public really want to see further reductions in GDP and rising joblessness, is this good economics? Do they want to see GDP back at the levels of the 1960s!! The case for a FTT is weak and confused...For example, it is often said that one aim is to reduce gambling activity in the markets and other damaging speculation, implying there is something morally wrong with risk taking. And yet when I heard a speech given by the left wing Economist Robert Reich he said that he was strongly against any tax hikes on gambling because such tax would hit the poorest most...'one of the most regressive taxes'..or something similar. Lets be clear...the goals of the FTT are a direct attack on capitalism by socialists at heart...they can attempt to justify this attack citing Wall Street's recent failures..'cleaning up Wall Street etc'.. and using erroneous claims regarding how much revenue will be raised without the costs being noticeable...as if by magic!! We need to meet this challenge head on with the strength of out argument, if we do this we have nothing to fear.
A good summary of the Tobin Tax put forward by the TUAC Secretariat for the 123rd Plenary Session in Paris, 12 November 2009: http://www.tuac.org/en/public/e-docs/00/00/05/D0/document_doc.phtml I find interesting the section that describes why the IMF was opposed to a Tobin Tax before:- The views of the IMF and OECD 8. Both the IMF and the OECD have been consistently sceptical on the desirability and practicality of a Tobin Tax. Several IMF papers, such as a 1996 article by the Fiscal Affairs Department, have argued why such global tax âwonât workâ. The OECD has not departed from this view and in June 2002 published a stand alone chapter in its Economic Outlook publication summing up the arguments by the IMF and the OECD against at the Tobin tax. - Frequent or short term trading is not a bad thing, it contributes to risk management and compensate for market opacity. Frequent traders and higher levels of daily trading can reduce volatility by increasing distribution of risks, and for markets that lacks transparency on pricing as is the case of foreign exchange markets it contributes to the âprice discoveryâ process (i.e. one needs to buy or sale to actually know the market price), and hence facilitate risk management by investors. - A Tobin Tax would increase market volatility (by reducing frequent trading). Thereis no evidence that a Tobin tax would reduce currency exchange volatility. In fact such tax would increase it. Any reduction in trade volume would not discriminate between good trades (i.e. arbitrage that has stabilising effects by reducing interest rate spreads) and bad trades. Less trading volume concentrates risks and hampers investorsâ management of risk and hence increases the cost of capital. For shallow markets in particular (those with few daily transactions) the tax would create liquidity problems and would increase volatility dramatically; because there would be less frequent traders, the markets could be subject to abrupt price movements due to a single transaction. - Volatility does not impact trade. The beneficial effect of reducing cost of insurance against volatility of a Tobin tax on trade and investment has not been proven. Theoretically there is no consensus on the impact of higher volatility on trade, and empirically the negative impact appears not to be large. - The Tax would dry up the derivatives market. To be effective, the tax would need to apply to derivative products that precisely aim at ensuring investors against volatility risks. In doing so the tax risks drying up the derivative market or at minimum would higher the cost of insuring possibly by more than they would be lowered by any reduction in volatility. - It would weaken market discipline on governments. Because the tax would reduce the ability of markets to respond instantly to policy changes or announcements, it would reduce market discipline on policy makers and governments. - Implementation could well prove insurmountable. If not, trading would tend to migrate to other, non-taxed jurisdictions, which may well be less regulated than existing venues, or participants could use other financial vehicles to achieve the same end. - Allocating Tax revenues would become a problem on its own. If it were possible to implement the Tax, the revenue yield from such a tax could be significant but would rapidly decrease in good part because the tax base itself is likely to fall. Even so, earmarking the revenues from such a tax for specific, albeit highly legitimate, expenditures, like ODA, would seem to be âneither economically efficient, nor politically optimalâ. - Political feasibility. The political conditions to implement and enforce such tax are not currently in place.
........................... And after reading their bios on wiki.... How many have any sort of securities background ????? You guessed it .....0 Pure populism None of them have any clue as to how markets work.... This is exactly what is wrong with the US system.... Nonqualified individuals making laws on subjects they know nothing about....
direct link http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a1keSW1Q3aPM or http://www.bloomberg.com/news/av/ 3rd one down