Perhaps every single share of stock, every single bond traded, every credit default swap traded should be taxed that way the Wall Streets and lazy rich pigs who use their money to exploit others will be the ones to pay for their fucking endless wars and rape of the earth.
From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/01-7
by Sarah Anderson
Published on Friday, July 1, 2011 by Foreign Policy In Focus
Out of the ashes of the 2008 financial crisis, an idea that progressives have been kicking around for decades – a financial transactions tax (FTT) – took on new life.
There were high hopes that the G-20, which had declared itself the “premier forum for international economic coordination,” would take up the proposal as a way to raise massive revenues to pay for the costs of the crisis and also discourage reckless short-term financial speculation.
And there were some early encouraging signs. In the summer of 2009, the chief financial regulator of the United Kingdom, Europe’s biggest financial market, came out strongly in support of expanding that country’s existing tax on securities trades to include derivatives and foreign exchange. By the fall, the leaders of Germany and France pledged to put the issue on the agenda of the G-20’s summit in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, there seemed to be at least a small kernel of potential in the Obama administration, as the president lashed out at “fat cat bankers” and proposed a levy on top banks to pay for bailouts.
Today, however, European leaders appear to have given up on a G-20 agreement and are going ahead on their own. The European Commission has included an EU-wide financial transactions tax in its budget proposal for 2014-2020. According to reports, the EC estimates that it would raise about 30 million euros ($43 million). The EU tax commissioner, who previously insisted that such taxes would only be feasible if coordinated globally, has now said there “there are ways to implement a financial transaction tax in the EU while mitigating the main risks identified.”
This comes on the heels of resolutions in support of such taxes that passed by strong majorities in the European Parliament and the French national parliament. A new Eurobarometer poll shows 61 percent of Europeans favor the plan.
Why has the debate moved so much further ahead in Europe than the United States?
Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/01-7