Thanks for the ray of hope. Hopefully things won't come to that. Someone needs to point out to the congressmen proposing this tax that the speculation and trading which caused this crisis was that of the murky UNREGULATED mortgage and credit derivitives markets, NOT the HIGHLY REGULATED and transparent trading of the equities and futures markets. Independent traders had nothing to do with FNM and FRE, BSC, LEH, and AIG leveraging themselves into oblivion to the point of insolvency. Independent traders had nothing to do with credit freezing up so that companies (supposedly) can't borrow the money they need to make payroll. Sure traders are there shorting the stocks as these companies blow themselves up ... always have been and always will/should be. In doing so, the public is alerted to get the hell out, i.e. when they see the stock of a company whose CEO says everything's fine plunging due to these "speculators". As I see it, with this tax they're essentially trying to shoot the messengers.
That's one of the things that really pisses me off about this. They want to tax transactions to punish the people responsible for the mess, but then exempt the people who *are* actually responsible. That leaves... us.
To those arguing, we are all in this together. It is easy for emotions to get high. Lets keep a level head. Yes, we need to contact our representatives and senators. But we also need to discuss and provide updates if any. Thanks for all efforts.
i agree and the funny thing is that the whole beef with all of this is who is gonna pay for this, politicians say we dont want the tax payers to pay for this mess it should come out of wall streets pockets, then you got some jag off democrat coming out and saying lets tax every transaction that joe public makes on a securities transaction. to me it seems like these politicans are like the blind leading the blind, dumb and dumber, i feel embarrassed that i have to subject myself from reading such bullshit and hypocrasy, where is montgomery brewster when you need em. NONE OF THE ABOVE NONE OF THE ABOVE he pegged politicians right on. i think these politicians have to rent brewsters millions and listen how the public perceives these momos.
According to an Obama stump speech today in Nev., he says: "And if we do have losses, Iâve proposed to institute a Financial Stability Fee on the entire financial services industry so that Wall Street foots the bill â not the American taxpayer. Iâve also said that if Iâm President, I will review the entire plan on the day I take office to make sure that it is working to save our economy and that you are getting your money back. (full transcript of speech) So my belief is that it will not show up on the bill presented now, but be ready for it as soon as Jan/Feb if "President Obama" has his way. In the meantime, keep bugging your Representatives and Senators, like seaside says.
Looking for articles on it, I'll post anything I find. At least this guy's in our corner, he was saying that business would just be driven to foreign exchanges if a fee was enacted: http://wbztv.com/consumer/economic.crisis.bailout.2.829696.html (search for transaction within the article)
Since when did reality have anything to do with this? It's politics and this tax could easily be included in the name of "protecting" the sheeple by recovering fees from "Wall Street," hobbling speculators, and reducing volatility. The root cause of this mess is "the consumer's" sense of entitlement and addiction to spending more money than they have. The gov't, banks, etc. all enabled and catered to this because it benefited them at the time, but how often do you hear politicians talk about sheeple living beyond their means? So don't expect logic to prevail with a transaction tax. In the end it will come down to politics.
Hmmm, looks like DeFazio's floating around his own bill now with some of his colleagues: http://news.opb.org/article/3192-defazio-introduce-bailout-alternative-progressives/
Here's an intersting article pointing out the problems with a transaction tax: http://seekingalpha.com/article/97456-taxing-trades-the-democrats-bad-idea -Guru