I missed this in the New York Times last Friday:
The finance ministers of France and Germany united Friday to raise pressure on EU partners like Italy to back a tax on financial trades that could be used to help the economically disadvantaged.
A letter to the Union's 25 other finance ministers showed Berlin and Paris working together again despite sharp differences over the number of lenders a single banking supervisor for Europe should regulate, and how soon it should go into operation.
“We strongly believe in the need for a fair contribution from the financial sector to cover the costs of the financial crisis,” Pierre Moscovici of France and Wolfgang Schäuble of Germany wrote in the letter.
Excellent news.
But let's also be clear: the optimal revenue for such a tax would be close to zero. Then harmful financial transactions would not be causing damage to the economy.
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“But let’s also be clear: the optimal revenue for such a tax would be close to zero.”
Surely you don’t believe all financial transactions are harmful? What about the miner hedging its future production to allow it to plan an expansion, the farming group hedging crop prices to plan the scale of planting, the jewellery group hedging its precious metals costs. While I agree there are many financial transactions that serve no purpose to society, there are a lot that do provide a benefit. And if these were all stopped, then we would be worse off
I said close to
That’s because the number of useful ones in relation to the number of useless ones is very small
I took your point into account when making my comment
Unfortunately today most financial transactions are harmful …
The share markets: rigged
LIBOR: rigged
Currency markets: rigged
Unemployment figures: rigged
Gold, silver and oil prices: rigged.
Mostly rigged and corrupt – the EU, Tories, Labor, Liberals, Democrats, Republicans, the Greens, Tax Havens et al.
Meanwhile in today’s Daily Mail reports it has emerged that Jimmy Savile was a regular visitor to Haute de la Garenne, the notorious abuse-ridden Jersey children’s home.
But like the islands notorious and secretive “financial services industry”, this has been kept quiet.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2211463/Jimmy-Savile-As-pressure-grows-BBC-cover-women-come-forward-ordeals.html#ixzz289OMvERS
“What about the miner hedging its future production to allow it to plan an expansion, the farming group hedging crop prices to plan the scale of planting, the jewellery group hedging its precious metals costs.” Pass the hanky!!