transaction tax

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JohnRoberts

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http://www.businessinsider.com/sarkozy-announced-planned-tax-on-financial-transactions-2011-8

I have warned about globalists looking for some kind of a transaction tax as a reliable revenue stream they don't have to renegotiate with governments. This seems like something completely different..

The original "tobin tax" they reference was proposed to slow down round trip currency swaps making them less attractive (in connection with abandoning the gold standard in the '70s).  This modern proposal may be just a good old fashioned business activity tax.. with a common currency there are no competing currencies to arbitrage.

Dodd-Frank proposed a similar transaction tax but it was shouted down and out of the bill (I'm thankful for even the smallest victories).
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I would actually be in favor of a Tobin tax like toll placed on high frequency stock market trading.. I still think there is some funny business going on with the computer algorithm trading crowd, too fast to be easily seen by regulators, but a penny here and a penny there times millions of transactions adds up.

This (tobin tax) is just like charging a 1/10 of a cent postage for spam email. Spam would dry up in about 1/10 of a second with even the smallest per piece cost.

So perhaps useful to discourage spam and high frequency trading... not sure we want to discourage normal business transactions. While this may seem small and relatively painless it must have some macro effect, or it wouldn't be worth doing. Of course the EU still has a number of large adjustments to make, to finish the grand experiment. Still early days for that. A common currency is only one piece of that more complicated marriage. 

JR
 

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