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

Andy Stern, the former head of the SEIU (who is also on Obama's deficit commission) is releasing his own plan. In it he of course calls on an FTT to fund it.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/12/andy_stern_takes_on_the_second.html

"His plan calls for the creation of "a permanent fund beginning in 2015, with an initial investment of $75 billion dollars, increasing by 3% annually. A range of long term investments (e.g. infrastructure, smart grid, education, and broadband) will be recommended each year by an outside panel of experts appointed by the President and Congress."

"So if we want long-term investments, we need a dedicated fund with a dedicated funding source. Stern proposes a few possibilities: a financial transaction tax, for instance, that would add a 0.25 percent-0.5 percent charge onto stock transactions if the stock is held for less than a year (that way, it mainly falls on professional investors making speculative trades, not ordinary investors managing their retirement savings). Another option is a surcharge on income over $1,000,000."

-Guru
 
need to tax something to paydown the deficit. Deficit went to surplus during clinton era (90s) by raising capital gain tax. Surplus went to huge deficit during the bush era (2000s). Lets hope obama will turn Bush's or Republican's deficit to surplus. Otherwise, obama is a failure.
 
Quote from Explorer:

Wikileaks - US Embassy cables - on Gordon Brown's push for FTT:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/238904
More...

Thanks for the link. Reading further into the highlighted quotes, the story reveals more about Brown's bombastic, unwanted pressure. His extreme obsession with social justice fortunately seen for the danger that it presented.

I have no opinion on Assange, but his wikileaks publications certainly reveal deep international distrust, division and disunity. Unless the entire world's safety gets at risk (e.g. a N. Korean event) there will not now, or any time in the future, be any "global" agreement, on anything.
 
Is there any way DeFaggio can get voted out? Or is Oregon just so damn liberal there is no hope? Is he up for election in 2012?

I say we saw off Cali up to Oregon and let her float away to china.

The biggest threat to the USA is not al qaida or the tailban....it's the hard core leftist, socialist...I am DEAD serious.
 
Quote from EMG:

need to tax something to paydown the deficit. Deficit went to surplus during clinton era (90s) by raising capital gain tax. Surplus went to huge deficit during the bush era (2000s). Lets hope obama will turn Bush's or Republican's deficit to surplus. Otherwise, obama is a failure.
More...

keep drinking the kool-aid EMG....

Clinton clearly did not achieve a surplus and he didn't leave President Bush with a surplus.

So why do they say he had a surplus?

As is usually the case in claims such as this, it has to do with Washington doublespeak and political smoke and mirrors.

Understanding what happened requires understanding two concepts of what makes up the national debt. The national debt is made up of public debt and intragovernmental holdings. The public debt is debt held by the public, normally including things such as treasury bills, savings bonds, and other instruments the public can purchase from the government. Intragovernmental holdings, on the other hand, is when the government borrows money from itself--mostly borrowing money from social security.

while the public debt went down in each of those four years, the intragovernmental holdings went up each year by a far greater amount--and, in turn, the total national debt (which is public debt + intragovernmental holdings) went up. Therein lies the discrepancy.

When it is claimed that Clinton paid down the national debt, that is patently false--as can be seen, the national debt went up every single year. What Clinton did do was pay down the public debt--notice that the claimed surplus is relatively close to the decrease in the public debt for those years. But he paid down the public debt by borrowing far more money in the form of intragovernmental holdings (mostly Social Security).

Update 3/31/2009: The following quote from an article at CBS confirms my explanation of the Myth of the Clinton Surplus, and the entire article essentially substantiates what I wrote.

"Over the past 25 years, the government has gotten used to the fact that Social Security is providing free money to make the rest of the deficit look smaller," said Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Consider the following quotes (and accompanying links) that demonstrate how people have known this for years:

In the late 1990s, the government was running what it -- and a largely unquestioning Washington press corps -- called budget "surpluses." But the national debt still increased in every single one of those years because the government was borrowing money to create the "surpluses."

So the table itself, according to the figures issued yesterday, showed the Federal Government ran a surplus. Absolutely false. This reporter ought to do his work. This crowd never has asked for or kept up with or checked the facts. Eric Planin--all he has to do is not spread rumors or get into the political message. Both Democrats and Republicans are all running this year and next and saying surplus, surplus. Look what we have done. It is false. The actual figures show that from the beginning of the fiscal year until now we had to borrow $127,800,000,000. - Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings, October 28, 1999

An overall "downsizing" of government and a virtual end to the arms race have contributed to the surplus, but the vast majority is coming from excess Social Security taxes being paid by the workforce in an attempt to keep Social Security benefit checks coming once the "baby-boomers" start to retire.

Of the $142 billion surplus projected by the end of 2000, $137 billion will come from excess Social Security taxes.

When these unified budget numbers are separated into Social Security and non-Social Security components, however, it becomes evident that all of the projected surplus throughout this period is attributable to Social Security. The remainder of the budget will remain in deficit throughout the next decade

The Myth of the Clinton Surplus

http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16
 
There's no talk in any of those DeFazio reports about a transaction tax on stock trades being considered as part of a compromise.

My blood pressure can return to normal now.
 
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