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

Quote from iluv2trade:

FOR THOSE OF YOU GETTING SCARED SHITLESS ON THIS SUBJECT

I'll admit i didnt read all 115 pages of this thread - so i can be repeating stuff - however there are decent signs out there that we may not get the transaction tax. Geitner himself is against it.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5A611320091108

or

http://www.morningstar.com/1/3/62389-update-us-geithner-against-global-transaction-tax-idea.html

Cheers
More...
thanks for the links.
the year has just begun. and I see no reason to become complacent about this issue now. especially when there are so much liberals and leftist germans around (Obama and his sister are huge fans of the socialist german system).

think of it; "the Book of 5 Rings" or the Way of the Warrior was written during 100 years of peace in Japan.

that our liberties are put to question is bad enough already.
so there is really no reason to become complacent about this.
first I want to see that issue officially rejected by government powers
 
Quote from benwm:
I added the following writeup to the Wikipedia Tobin Tax 'Arguments Opposing' section. Hope no-one sues me!
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They did not, but did other things to you, including mixing with political opinion, discounting as local (not global) etc.

But wait, do not retailate. First read the Wiki rule book. See if some law is broken, however minor, and only then challenge on this technicality. So if a tax proponent countered your anti-tax material on grounds of 'lack of global perspective' (and he did it more than once!), e.g.

"Because of these differences in perspective, there can be no comparison between the respective "net job losses" of the two."

remove it as "original research" under the 'No Original Research' rule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research )

Yes, it is a place for lawyers, definitely not for researches, or other people with a strong sense of fairness, because Referenced Falsehood Trumps Unreferenced Truth (aka WP:VERIFY). A recent example (still waiting to be dealt with):

Cretog8 could easily delete this line:

"these price swings will thus be increased as volume decreases due to such a tax."

by simply stating: "doesn't sound like something the source says"

even though the 'source' says this:

"Reduced exchange-rate volatility means that businesses would need to spend less money ‘hedging’ (buying currencies in anticipation of future price changes), thus freeing up capital for investment in new production"

Referenced Falsehood Trumps Unreferenced Truth - welcome to Wikipedia!

BTW it is a 'self-published' and a 'circular reference' Source, but I didn't say anything ;)
 
Quote from ZeroSigma:

They did not, but did other things to you, including mixing with political opinion, discounting as local (not global) etc.

But wait, do not retailate. First read the Wiki rule book. See if some law is broken, however minor, and only then challenge on this technicality. So if a tax proponent countered your anti-tax material on grounds of 'lack of global perspective' (and he did it more than once!), e.g.

"Because of these differences in perspective, there can be no comparison between the respective "net job losses" of the two."

remove it as "original research" under the 'No Original Research' rule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research )

Yes, it is a place for lawyers, definitely not for researches, or other people with a strong sense of fairness, because Referenced Falsehood Trumps Unreferenced Truth (aka WP:VERIFY). A recent example (still waiting to be dealt with):

Cretog8 could easily delete this line:

"these price swings will thus be increased as volume decreases due to such a tax."

by simply stating: "doesn't sound like something the source says"

even though the 'source' says this:

"Reduced exchange-rate volatility means that businesses would need to spend less money ‘hedging’ (buying currencies in anticipation of future price changes), thus freeing up capital for investment in new production"

Referenced Falsehood Trumps Unreferenced Truth - welcome to Wikipedia!

BTW it is a 'self-published' and a 'circular reference' Source, but I didn't say anything ;)
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I have made a couple of subtle changes...see if you can spot them!
 
A month old, but relevant...A Bank of England member and academic not keen on Tobin.

http://www.eurointelligence.com/article.581+M5e37ae11260.0.html

An Alternative to a Tobin Tax

By: Charles Goodhart

The most efficient taxes are those which are imposed on payers who are not mobile enough to avoid the tax. Capital and rich people are more mobile than land, housing and poor people, which is why high marginal tax rates on capital and the rich are self-defeating, but taxes on consumer purchases, labour incomes and housing are efficient. The Tobin tax – a tax on financial trasactions -is not efficient as exchange operations can be easily done anywhere in the world. Why radical and consumer groups go on backing the Tobin tax idea, rather than, for example, the much more promising land tax proposals has always surprised me.

But beyond that the Tobin tax is a bad idea, since it would greatly increase both the costs and volatility of foreign exchange dealing and throw a huge spanner into the workings of the global financial economic system. The proponents of the Tobin tax mistake the fact that commercial end-use of foreign exchange (fx) dealing is not more than about 10%, at most, of the total of fx transactions into a belief that the other 90% is a form of ‘socially useless’ speculative froth, which could, and should, decline without real loss. This latter viewpoint is just wrong. Taking an unhedged, open fx position is risky, and, hence, bank market makers are not allowed to do so, beyond limits. So any new commercial order unbalances a market maker’s initial position, almost forcing him to rebalance by trading out of his new position with another market maker. The ‘hot potato’ will pass from hand to hand until prices and quantities eventually adjust to a new equilibrium.

Essentially a Tobin tax imposes much greater costs , even if it seems proportionately low, because the margins on which the market makers are operating are low. The costs of transacting out of an unbalanced position would rise sharply, and with it the bid-ask spread on fx deals, liquidity would disappear and fx volatility would be enhanced. Meanwhile speculators, betting on a significant change in the asset/currency price, would not be much deterred by a small increase in transaction costs.



Indeed, most serious advocates of a Tobin tax admit that it would have the effect of raising both the volatility and the costs of financial markets in the short run. Actually one expressed purpose of the exercise is “to throw sand into the wheels” of a well-oiled market machine, so that that machine is bound to jerk, buck and kick. But why go out of ones way to make the world’s market mechanisms less efficient?



The answer, I believe, lies in a somewhat particular view of market mechanisms, that short-run volatility will deter ‘bad’ speculators from entering the market more than it would put off ‘good’ speculators and ‘legitimate’ end-users. The ‘good’ speculators are those who exert effort to assess fundamental values; the ‘bad’ speculators are those who base their trades on momentum, herd-followers, who by jumping on behind a trend, cause it to overshoot, thereby exacerbating medium and longer-term volatility.

Additional short-term volatility, which is perceived to be relatively costless, might help to dampen down, more socially expensive, medium and longer term volatility. It would, do so by making the development of trends in financial markets harder to spot. But is this really much of a case? Financial markets are sufficiently efficient in the short run, with plenty of reversals and massive uncertainty. Adding extra artificial short-run noise is no better in markets than in music.

Moreover, it has long been recognized that artificial barriers to trade, whether in goods or in assets do deter legitimate end-users considerably. Perhaps even more than the, often relatively small, pecuniary costs would suggest. Counter-intuitively the introduction of a Tobin tax could even raise the ratio of purely speculative to commercial and legitimate end-use operations in those financial markets to which it was applied.

Many of those who support such a tax neither know, nor care, what effects it might have on market efficiency. Besides a, generally misguided view that its imposition would fall primarily on the financial sector, rather than be passed on to its customers, the hope is that such a tax would produce lots of lovely revenue, to be spent on good deeds, such as foreign aid. So if not the Tobin tax, can one suggest some other revenue raiser?

Let me suggest a much better alternative, a tiny tax imposed on every individual addressee in an internet message, payable by the sender, and collected by the server from the sender. What are the advantages? First, it would kill spam. Second, it would make senders think who really needs to receive the message. Third, the internet, being so much cheaper than any other current message service, would remain the preferred channel of communication, so the tax base would be immobile. Fourth, and most important, it would be a significant source of revenue.

Spam really is socially useless. Market making in fx has a social use. Let us tax the first, and not the second. Whenever a well-meaning, but misguided, do-gooder suggests adopting a Tobin tax on fx, or other financial transactions, trump by proposing instead a Goodhart tax on each e-mail addressee. We might even win.

Charles Goodhart is LSE Professor Emeritus of Banking and Finance.
 
Quote from benwm:

A month old, but relevant...A Bank of England member and academic not keen on Tobin.

http://www.eurointelligence.com/article.581+M5e37ae11260.0.html

An Alternative to a Tobin Tax

By: Charles Goodhart

The most efficient taxes are those which are imposed on payers who are not mobile enough to avoid the tax. Capital and rich people are more mobile than land, housing and poor people, which is why high marginal tax rates on capital and the rich are self-defeating, but taxes on consumer purchases, labour incomes and housing are efficient. The Tobin tax – a tax on financial trasactions -is not efficient as exchange operations can be easily done anywhere in the world. Why radical and consumer groups go on backing the Tobin tax idea, rather than, for example, the much more promising land tax proposals has always surprised me.

But beyond that the Tobin tax is a bad idea, since it would greatly increase both the costs and volatility of foreign exchange dealing and throw a huge spanner into the workings of the global financial economic system. The proponents of the Tobin tax mistake the fact that commercial end-use of foreign exchange (fx) dealing is not more than about 10%, at most, of the total of fx transactions into a belief that the other 90% is a form of ‘socially useless’ speculative froth, which could, and should, decline without real loss. This latter viewpoint is just wrong. Taking an unhedged, open fx position is risky, and, hence, bank market makers are not allowed to do so, beyond limits. So any new commercial order unbalances a market maker’s initial position, almost forcing him to rebalance by trading out of his new position with another market maker. The ‘hot potato’ will pass from hand to hand until prices and quantities eventually adjust to a new equilibrium.

Essentially a Tobin tax imposes much greater costs , even if it seems proportionately low, because the margins on which the market makers are operating are low. The costs of transacting out of an unbalanced position would rise sharply, and with it the bid-ask spread on fx deals, liquidity would disappear and fx volatility would be enhanced. Meanwhile speculators, betting on a significant change in the asset/currency price, would not be much deterred by a small increase in transaction costs.



Indeed, most serious advocates of a Tobin tax admit that it would have the effect of raising both the volatility and the costs of financial markets in the short run. Actually one expressed purpose of the exercise is “to throw sand into the wheels” of a well-oiled market machine, so that that machine is bound to jerk, buck and kick. But why go out of ones way to make the world’s market mechanisms less efficient?



The answer, I believe, lies in a somewhat particular view of market mechanisms, that short-run volatility will deter ‘bad’ speculators from entering the market more than it would put off ‘good’ speculators and ‘legitimate’ end-users. The ‘good’ speculators are those who exert effort to assess fundamental values; the ‘bad’ speculators are those who base their trades on momentum, herd-followers, who by jumping on behind a trend, cause it to overshoot, thereby exacerbating medium and longer-term volatility.

Additional short-term volatility, which is perceived to be relatively costless, might help to dampen down, more socially expensive, medium and longer term volatility. It would, do so by making the development of trends in financial markets harder to spot. But is this really much of a case? Financial markets are sufficiently efficient in the short run, with plenty of reversals and massive uncertainty. Adding extra artificial short-run noise is no better in markets than in music.

Moreover, it has long been recognized that artificial barriers to trade, whether in goods or in assets do deter legitimate end-users considerably. Perhaps even more than the, often relatively small, pecuniary costs would suggest. Counter-intuitively the introduction of a Tobin tax could even raise the ratio of purely speculative to commercial and legitimate end-use operations in those financial markets to which it was applied.

Many of those who support such a tax neither know, nor care, what effects it might have on market efficiency. Besides a, generally misguided view that its imposition would fall primarily on the financial sector, rather than be passed on to its customers, the hope is that such a tax would produce lots of lovely revenue, to be spent on good deeds, such as foreign aid. So if not the Tobin tax, can one suggest some other revenue raiser?

Let me suggest a much better alternative, a tiny tax imposed on every individual addressee in an internet message, payable by the sender, and collected by the server from the sender. What are the advantages? First, it would kill spam. Second, it would make senders think who really needs to receive the message. Third, the internet, being so much cheaper than any other current message service, would remain the preferred channel of communication, so the tax base would be immobile. Fourth, and most important, it would be a significant source of revenue.

Spam really is socially useless. Market making in fx has a social use. Let us tax the first, and not the second. Whenever a well-meaning, but misguided, do-gooder suggests adopting a Tobin tax on fx, or other financial transactions, trump by proposing instead a Goodhart tax on each e-mail addressee. We might even win.

Charles Goodhart is LSE Professor Emeritus of Banking and Finance.
More...

I have added parts of this article to the Wikipedia Tobin Tax discussion...
 
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