Quote from seasideheights:
In a letter sent late yesterday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 16 Democrats asked her to ensure any rescue legislation include a ``transaction tax'' on all U.S. stock trades and on other types of trades, such as credit default swaps, options and futures. They are proposing the tax would be at a rate of one quarter of one percent on all trades.
``The same Wall Street speculators and investors who are principally responsible for having caused this avoidable financial crisis and profited from it must now be required to pay for it, not U.S. taxpayers,'' according to the letter, which was signed by Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, and Representative Pete Stark, a California Democrat.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a5UhcbI4jecU
LOL Ya gotta love the stupidity of it all.... PDT "rules" to protect the "little" guys (from themselves) from playing the game cuz they are not smart enough, or they don't have enough money, or they don't know what the hell they are doing. Oh, and of course to eliminate market volitility caused by all the daytraders, we bad.
Followed by the advice of, " let the "professionals" help you to invest your money, they know what they are doing, they are better suited to manage risk." (cough cough)
Then along comes the GREAT idea to let John Q Public manage their own SS funds.
Then the fall out from the CDS created by the MBA masterminds (those professionals, remember?), who lent too much money to overextended John Q's who was presumably not smart enough to handle his own money, but hey give him a bunch of money for a nice house..... WHY oh WHY didn't I let LEH or BS or some of those OTHER, professional, more able people take care of my money????
And now tax trades? (and of course the profits from those trades, should there be any) Money for NOTHING..........
Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dummer..........