Tne EU threw London's financial community a lifeline yesterday when ten member states, inclduing France and Germany, agreed to draft a financial transaction tax.
The move may just be enough to persuade many banks to keep as many of their operations as possible in London when the otherwise obvious things to do would be to move them to Frankfurt.
Bizarrely these states seem to be helping the last section of the U.K. that needs a lifeline to survive Brexit get just what they want. It would have been hard to make that up.
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I would have thought you would be a fan of financial transaction taxes?
The right sum to collect from an FTT is nothing
Basing a tax on the perpetuation of a bad is not a good idea
It can be if your aim is not revenue generation. Changing the price of something moves the market along its demand curve…
Ah, I understand now.
Well, would you credit it! As thick as the thieves they are…………….
Finance are not running things around here for nothing.
Sometimes fools do the right thing by mistake: the smartest and most dangerous bankers stay in London, and the EU still gets access to a deep and liquid capital market.
Until it goes horribly wrong, and the rump of the UK gets to foot the bill or sink beneath the waves.
Or both: think Iceland or Ireland or Cyprus, with the banks in charge and bankers staying out of prison.
Whether Paris and Berlin can protect their local banks and their economy from contagion is an interesting question: but the answer that matters today is “Do they think they can?”