Its not that easy.. there are many traders in london, who trade German derivatives for a living.. who knows how we will be effected by the FTT (extra charges, drop in volumes) .
They should form a commonwealth union instead with countries of similar standards of living and infrastructure. These 4 commonwealth countries have GDP per capita superior to the UK. List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita 3 Singapore 60,688 2011 6 Brunei 51,760 2011 15 Canada 40,370 2011 16 Australia 39,721 2011 22 United Kingdom 35,657 2011
Bureaucrats will do the hard work for you. They will create such a maze of rules , loopholes and exemptions that it will create new ways to speculate and arbitrage. One cannot fight speculation. If speculators cannot do it on regulated markets this activity will move to black market and physical goods and currencies.
You might be interested to know that there is a new London derivatives exchange called NASDAQ OMX NLX that will be open for trading from April 2013 with initial product offerings in Bobl, Bund and Schatz futures amongst others. I have emailed them with other product suggestions that they are not currently offering from April. http://www.glidetechnologies.com/trading/nlx/ If German politicians want to kill Eurex by introducing a FTT then hopefully London based exchanges such as Liffe and NLX can fill the void. Prior to Eurex introducing electronic trading in Bund futures in the 1990s the bulk of the Bund trading was conducted on Liffe. So there is certainly a precedent for such a shift between London and Frankfurt. I can't see how the FTT bloc can tax trading on a London exchange without the UK's approval, and infact it is potentially a great business opportunity for London based exchanges. As traders, it is in our mutual interest for the new NLX exchange to be a financial success so I will be looking to trade on NLX in German derivatives and suggest others do the same.