Quote from Robert A. Green:
But, I think the UK is being stigmatized by the general media as a trouble-maker and selfish. They are standing up for financial services and without financial services the EU and euro zone will be disenfranchised.
Yes, they are stigmatized.
I wonder if this all is not a tramp set up by Germany and France.
They deliberately made conditions they knew the UK could never accept.
They fully know that the FTT will have devastating consequencies on the EU economy.
But in that case they will be able to put all the blame on those not willing to participate, claiming their unwillingness to cooperate is the reason of the failing of EU and a devastating worldwide crisis.
This way they could force all remaining countries to collaborate in order to avoid a world wide disaster.
This is why I think it would be important to concentrate on arguments that prove that an FTT, even if global, would devastate the financial sector at least, or the whole world economy.
It is not the only reason to avoid an FTT, that traders and financial institutions would simply migrate to non-participating countries.
We should show that an FTT would seriously harm the world economy even if it were global
They also quite often like to emphasize that this FTT idea comes from a Nobel Prize laureate economist called Tobin.
It should also be emphasized that this Nobel Prize laureate became vehemently opposing the idea of an FTT in his later years (when he became more experienced and a bit wiser).