1/4% Tax on all stock trades pushed in NY Times today

Quote from rsikit:

Scary when the unions have this much power, and the unions were the ones all pressing for our transaction tax. Just look what they got for healthcare:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091210/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul
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You don't get more "main street", "middle America" than that. Good to hear their perspective, they carry alot of weight in most States. Given there are 2 Senate seats per state, ultra liberal highly populated states like California have the same number of votes as Kansas, Texas, Wyoming, and other VERY agri-business friendly States. Trade organizations like the Cattlemens Association carry a big stick in much of the country.

Edit: opps I the comment was to this link:

http://www.capitalpress.com/califor...tock-Tax-121109
 
Quote from rsikit:

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, described Britain’s tax as an “attractive idea” while speaking at a meeting of European center-right leaders in Bonn, but said she preferred the idea of a levy on financial transactions.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/business/global/11bonus.html

This just keeps getting weirder with Merkel, this is from today.
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I like this quote from the NYT's piece:

Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies, said that talk of the transaction tax is “99 percent political posturing while it is also useful because it wins brownie points at the G20 level.”

He explained: “You would have to have agreement from America and Asia, and everyone knows there is no chance of that.”

-Guru
 
Quote from seasideheights:

That article is fantastic. Non Wall Street people speaking out against the tax. That's a good source to use for the future.

Great find rsikit.
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Thanks we can email reps/sens from states in the midwest whose main income is farming. If enacted this could also drive up the prices of food costs to us main street americans as well. The tax could be passed along to us in higher prices, from wheat, soybeans, pork, cattle-beef, dairy, orange/orange juice prices, rice etc all the commodities that trade on the exchange. What about lumber, thats a traded commodity, housing costs could rise. Robusta/Arabica coffee are commodities that could increase the price of coffee. Then starbucks might charge 10 bucks for a tall!! So every aspect of our lives, everything we consume will be directly affected by this tax. Regardless if they exempt pensions or health /retirment savings, these so called miniscule taxes will be passed on to us everyday. We will not only get taxed on our investments but also everything else, so a double taxation with this tax!! Please write these senators. Those of you whom live in places like nebraska , kansas, colorado, texas(cotton), oklahoma, wymoing, iowa , idaho etc..... This is important. Oh I forgot 2 important commodities that trade, cocoa- so price of chocolate and everything that uses cocoa bean will rise, and cotton- cotton is traded and it make as know clothing, blankets , pillows, fabric etcc... So we are in danger of being hit by this tax from every angle. Even for the middle class as they say in the bill that 99.9 % will be unaffected by this tax, well thats bs. Becuase maybe they do not invest so they wont be hit there, but their clothes, housing, and all food base consupmtion will be taxed, so we can say in fact 99.9% of the middle class will greatly be affected by this tax.
 
David Prosser: Demanding more flesh from banks

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/b...-demanding-more-flesh-from-banks-1838137.html

If bankers thought that one of the few positive effects of the new tax charges on bonuses might be that it would mark an end to open season on their kind, it did not take long for them to be disappointed. While readers of most newspapers woke up yesterday to stories about that new levy, The Wall Street Journal had an additional little treat for banking folk: an editorial jointly penned by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy that effectively relaunched the campaign for a new global tax on financial transactions.

This is the so-called Tobin tax that the Prime Minister called for at the most recent G20 summit in St Andrews, only to fall strangely quiet on the matter when it emerged that other countries were not so keen. It would be a small levy – maybe 0.5 per cent – charged on all financial transactions, both on- and off-exchange everywhere in the world, and would raise many billions, assuming that all major financial centres signed up.
 
London Times Editorial--Not time for Tobin

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6952332.ece



The main objection to a Tobin tax, however, is that it will not work. Taxes that do not work are worse than a waste of time. They have a cost, if only by diverting the energies of public servants into impracticable byways and clever bankers into tax avoidance schemes, with no compensating benefit in financial stability. The tax will not work because it is impossible to administer. Traders in, say, London could evade it by booking the transaction in other financial centres that are not covered by the tax. To be effective, the tax would have to be implemented globally.

That is unlikely but not impossible. Perhaps the catastrophic experience of the credit crisis might create agreement among governments. Perhaps all the main financial centres would sign up to the tax. But that still leaves the offshore financial centres. It is difficult to see what possible incentive they would have to implement a tax when it would plainly be in their financial interest to attract business from international banks.

Bad taxes can have far-reaching consequences. One of the reasons that London is so prominent a financial centre dates back to US regulations adopted in the 1960s that limited the amount of interest that banks could pay on deposits. US banks moved to London to get round them, and the huge eurobond market developed as a result.
 
With regard to Germany

To the earlier question of explaining Germany, you need to recall that Angela Merkel is only in power because she cottled together a colation government.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,657368,00.html

The agreement on how to govern Germany over the next four years runs to some 124 pages. The coalition deal that Chancellor Merkel and FDP leader Guido Westerwelle finally agreed to over the weekend has provoked fury from the opposition. SPIEGEL ONLINE took a look at exactly what it contains.

Germany has a new government after the coalition partners hammered out a deal on how it intends to govern over the next four years. Following tough negotiations lasting three weeks Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) finally emerged on Saturday with a coalition agreement.

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Now, if you follow this you will see what is going on. Angela Merkel is supporting the transaction Tax. She is the Chancellor.

However, in order to be able to govern she had to form a coalition with the Free Democrats....

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from earlier--

Germany's new development minister said Saturday he opposed taxing financial transactions, putting him at odds with support for such a levy expressed earlier this year by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"I am speaking out clearly against a tax on financial transactions which would be used to finance development aid," said Dirk Niebel, a member of the pro-business Free Democrats who took up his post in October.

"It is already a stated position of the liberal party."

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So Merkel is in favor of the transaction tax but Merkel's own development minister is against. And she has to have him and his party with her to stay in power.
 
Quote from ksharmon:


So Merkel is in favor of the transaction tax but Merkel's own development minister is against. And she has to have him and his party with her to stay in power.
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Do you by any chance know how the rest of the Bundestag feel about the issue? I assume that even if the development minister and his party are against it, there are several more liberal parties in their Bundestag who would favor this and join Merkel's position?
 
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