Where do you read that? Clearly an insurance fee on liabilities has much more chance than a tax on bonuses or a tax on dividends... To me, it's just status quo. Japan is part of the "leading group" for global market annihilation and Italy would just outlaw futures trading if it was possible, enough said...
http://m.spiegel.de/article.do?id=675759&p=1 Tax Gridlock including on the FTT in my view. Tax proposals are unlikely in Germany, as it could ruin their Center-Right business coalition. Germans keep saying Deutsche Bank should remain in universal banking, with no punitive bank taxes - and German banks can win over UK and US banking business if they go over board with unilateral reform. G7 is reinforcing G20 and IMF on the need for global financial-reform and no unilateral arbitrage action. US Congressmen both Democrat and Republican have said they can't hamper US banks if Deutche Bank and others are not subject to the same rules. The French finance minister wants French banks to stay universal too, and to shield them competitively. To pander to the global press, the French, British and German presidents are still floating a FTT. Also to placate restive charities, climate control and poor countries in need of funding. FTT is a mirage goal and on par with climate change and nuclear reduction. G20 will just talk throughout 2010 and I highly doubt concrete agreements will be made and ratified in home countries on serious financial-reform - if it truly hampers banks. Most tax change is now in gridlock in the US and Germany. Probably UK too with upcoming elections. It's going to be a bank levy insurance plan or nothing in my view. US tax gridlock going into the midterms includes expiration of Bush tax cuts, scheduled for 2011. Congress needs to vote to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class only, which is called for in the President's 2011 budget up for discussion now. The President does not want to extend the tax cuts for the investor-class, repealing the qualifying dividend tax rate, which will jump from 15% to 39.6% for the top rate. Plus, the President wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire on the rich. I expect Republicans to say extend the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers or at least investor's too or no extenders at all for anyone. If Congress does not agree on a selective extender or full extender, it threatens a stiff tax increase on the middle-class - during a fragile recovery and the midterms. The Republicans will carefully say they are not trying to defend the rich, but the highest two tax brackets apply to small-business job creators and you simply canât raise their taxes during a continuing jobs-recession. The Republicans will defend the dividends tax rate as helping to keep the stock markets up and it effects the middle-class mostly. Congress ran into this same game of chicken and brinkmanship over the Bush estate tax cuts. The estate tax was repealed in 2010 and it returns to pre-Bush (much higher rates and tiny exemptions) in 2011. Congress was expected to delay the repeal and extend 2009 rates to 2010 and 2011. That did not happen. Republicans said fix it better or not at all. The entire President's tax agenda has to go through the new 59/41 Senate dynamic and with the Tea Party getting stronger, what tax increase change can Congress pass at all before the midterms? Of course this includes a FTT too. No way no how for an FTT in the US anytime soon.
9 minutes into recording: Borg's baffling reply to question about his TT discussions with Geithner: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...eekly_Dreadful_Debts_and_Damaged_Reputations/
UK Treasury sees insurance levy as most likely option: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/07/g7-alistair-darling-levy-banking Alistair Darling believes plans for a new global levy or tax on banks could be agreed within 18 months after finance ministers from the G7 industrial nations insisted at the weekend that financial _institutions should bear the cost of taxpayers' bailouts. The chancellor is confident that a series of summits this year will narrow down the options to just one by the end of the year, with the Treasury currently seeing an insurance levy as the likeliest option. G7 ministers are now waiting for a study by the International Monetary Fund â which is considering four options including a financial transaction tax and an insurance levy â to help push the debate forward when it is published in April.
I'm not sure it's baffling. Sounds to me like the ponytailed Finance Minister Borg has steered Geithner further away from a FTT. It's really good news the US is talking with Sweden to hear about their experience. And given the choice, would Obama and Timmy G prefer to hang out with an aging rock star with a ponytail (Borg rumoured to be the '5th member' of Abba) or Brown & Sarkozy? Not a difficult choice...
Dated Thursday, 08 February 2001 10:40, yet Google news says half hour ago, anyway... --------------------------------------------------------- The New American The Global Taxman Written by Steve Bonta thenewamerican.com/index.php/economy/commentary-mainmenu-43/2902-the-global-taxman ............The Great Deception An astonishingly candid article by Kevin Baumert of the UN-affiliated Global Policy Forum outlines the deceptive strategies used by proponents of global taxation: The process of implementing global levies will necessarily be slow and incremental. Thus it is important to take these small, incremental steps now, so that larger ones are possible in the future. "Starting small" means that tax proposals can begin with small percentages, levied at the local or state level. Increasing the boldness and scale of the tax are secondary steps.... Low rates are less politically daunting.... Baumert also recommends deliberately misleading rhetoric in the propaganda campaign on behalf of global taxation: The very word "tax" is loaded with negative connotations and is often synonymous with political death. For this reason, couching proposals in terms of a fee, levy, or charge will be decidedly more palatable to policymakers....
This same website -- The New American -- also published another story today predicting that both Geithner and Goldman Sachs will reverse their positions and actually support a FTT in the near future. I'm not posting a link to that article because I don't want them to get the traffic from this site, but it's currently the top story on their website. Isn't this site supposed to have a conservative bias? This article sounds fairly pro-FTT to me, but maybe I'm not reading it closely enough. I suppose they're just assuming Obama is too liberal not to be for a FTT. Here's an excerpt (article titled "Tobin Tax and UN Global Taxman Making A Comeback"): "Geithner's anti-Tobin comments may or may not reflect genuine opposition by the administration to the transaction tax; there is ample reason for suspecting that the announced opposition is mere posturing and maneuvering, and that Team Obama may be planning a strategic flip-flop on the issue. After all, that is what Gordon Brown did; before becoming a top Tobin advocate, he was a leading opponent. Ditto for billionaire speculator George Soros, who flipped for the Tobin tax back in 2001"