Excellent idea! I tried to slow down a bit that 'viral' signature collection campaign launched by Baker and Stanley. Wherever you see that "Financial Transactions Tax â urgent call for support" charity appeal, just copy-paste this: http://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/01/2...ns-tax-–-urgent-call-for-support/#comment-414
As a suggestion, it would be best not to place direct links to enemy sites on this thread (like CEPR). Whenever someone from here clicks the link it leaves a record that the enemy can follow back here. Since automatic URL parsing seems to be the norm on this board, I would suggest writing links as www_sampleaddress.com, replacing the . with _. Just a thought for the paranoid. The enemy is very well organized and it's best not to underestimate them.
Good points in your comment. Something else that seems to be lost on the FTT crowd is that reductions in transaction volume will lead to a loss of capital gains taxes. I am not sure of the exact numbers yet but it seems reasonable that this reduction would substantially offset or even exceed any FTT revenue. This makes it a net neutral or net loss to the government.
I agree with this 100% and would also include liberal blogs like Huffington Post and the many others that have written pro-FTT articles. They know where their traffic is coming from, and it may just inspire them to write more articles if they think they're being attacked by a bunch of traders and not the general public.
I think you are right. I will follow this 'protocol' from now on I also think we can do better job on the Wikipedia FTT and Tobin tax pages. It seems that there is only one supporter of Tobin taxes editing the Wikipedia pages (Boyd Reimer), albeit a paid up 'full time content shifter', whilst there are several of us...there is no reason why we cannot embark on a cheeky 'speculative attack' and bombard the Tobin Tax pages on a daily basis with editing changes that he cannot keep up with. A sustained attack whereby we take out every 'weasal word', 'original research' and other violations of Wikipedia policy. Anything and everything is fair game, 'within the Wikipedia editing policy'. He will lose heart at our sustained efforts, but if we act in tandem and continue adding information that highlights the pitfalls of a Tobin Tax, whilst also 'throwing sand in the wheels' of his supporting efforts, victory will be assured. Just one small part of a successful bear raid but I believe the stakes have been raised by the Trade Union Congress and we need to step up our game too. The currency peg will be broken!
I regularly check the search engines for references to this thread. Should the pro-tax crowd infiltrate this thread with messages or with sourcing our strategies, we'll move to a password protected site that I have all ready to go. Until such time if/when it's necessary, keeping the information here allows us to attract traders who browse this site. We're getting approx 1,000 views a day from the thread regulars here, casual browsers of the board, and people whom I've invited here over the past year who mainly lurk. I'm not eager to enable the new site as this one is working well for us. As a reminder, this thread is intended for traders & industry execs only. Please don't mention it in comment sections that we fill in on the internet or elsewhere. Thanks.
nice. What we are doing at a grassroots level i.e. in our own back yards but I have been asked to do a series of currency trading presentations for traders groups in my area and the last 2 slides highlight the need for people to be very active on issues that relate to their livelihoods and especially things like the ftt and the leverage bs the cftc is trying to pull with spot forex.
A little bit more on Bank of England Governor's dismissal of the Tobin tax reported earlier today: Governor Mervyn King: Gordon Brown's city tax is bottom of our list of options The Governor of the Bank of England yesterday embarrassed Gordon Brown by saying his idea for solving the worldwide banking crisis was 'bottom of the list' of options. Mervyn King said the Prime Minister's proposal for a 'Tobin tax' on financial transactions had been dismissed by all central banking bosses, including himself. The tax, which is named after U.S. economist James Tobin, would charge a small levy on all trades as a way of reducing risky City transactions. But Mr King told MPs: 'I don't think I know anyone in the international circuit who is enthusiastic about it. Of all the components of radical reform, Tobin tax is probably bottom of the list.' http://www.dail*****.co.uk/news/art...King-Gordon-Browns-city-tax-list-options.html
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...eDuW_vDwhzAU_k6Cg&sig2=LLS7_JAClksFNSGp0LUsvA Mr. King appeared to dismiss the viability of a Tobin tax, saying there was more international support for a levy on bank balance sheets, as has been put forward in the U.S. as a way to recoup the costs of bailing out the sector. "Off all the components of radical reform, I think the Tobin tax is bottom of the list," Mr. King said.