The editorial in today's Observer says that George Osborne has to admit that his strategy is doomed to failure. I took the opportunity to add a comment - something that I have been doing a lot recently. Indeed, if you are interested to see what I've been commenting on, you can look at all my comments on the Guardian/Obsever Comments page here. I've also added a link on the right of my blog.
So, as a sampler, here's what I posted today.
"I'm going to say it again. Read the first line of Bank of England's report for the BIS Triennial report, which can be found here. It states that "Net average daily turnover during April 2010 in the UK foreign exchange market was $1,854 billion per day," Assuming 250 trading days per year, let's call that $464 trillion a year or around 300 trillion pounds. That's 300 000 000 000 000 GDP. The UK is directly responsible for 37% of the world total. Congratulations.
The part of this which is actually necessary for business is almost certainly minuscule. The rest is pure speculation - and has absolutely no value whatsover. It's the result of employing the brightest and best mathematicians and scientists from our universities to come up with a fractionally better way of siphoning money out of the system and stuffing it into the pockets of traders and bankers. How tragic that they have nothing more useful to do.
I defy anyone reading this post to explain why 300 trillion pounds of foreign exchange does anything useful. Liquidity has nothing to do with it.
On the contrary, this ridiculous activity is not only totally pointless, it is actually extremely dangerous. It makes the foreign exchange markets completely unstable and allows the markets (or rather the mindless algorithms that are running on the supercompters in the City of London) to paralyse the ability of governments to implement the reforms that are so essential. Dare to even mention regulation of the financal markets, and the "markets" will make you pay.
The solution is blindingly obvious. It has been voted in by the European Parliament on the 8th of March. It is being actively pushed by Sarkozy and Merkel. But as long as George Osborne sticks to his policy of making everyone in the UK pay for the mess except those responsible, then nothing will happen.
Introducing a 0.05% Financial Transaction Tax, as proposed by many groups including the Robin Hood Tax people, Europeans for Financial Reform, plus a very large number of economists, would have one of two effects (or a combination).
Either (1) it would raise 0.05% of 300 trillion - namely 15 billion pounds of revenue for the govenment, or (2) it would slow down or maybe even completely prevent speculative trading on the foreign exchange markets. Both are highly desirable.
And if anyone from the banking sector tries to tell me that it is vital for currency transactions to be totally free of transaction charges, then they will have to explain to me why the banks charge me over 10% for changing euros into pounds or vice versa, and over 39% for cashing a cheque in dollars.
If the UK government persists in blocking such extremely sensible measures, they would not only be preventing the Eurozone countries from getting out of the current mess, they would be acting directly against the interests of the British tax payers.
It's time for the LibDems to pull the plug on George Osborne. Vincent Cable - wake up!"
20 Aug 2011
Astroturfing
I just got my copy of Taki Oldman's documentary "(Astro) Turf Wars" that was recommended by George Monbiot's blog at the beginning of august.
It is superb. Every one capable of rational thought should watch it. It demonstrates how the so-called "Grass Roots" movements such as the Tea Party and the protests about Obama's health care reforms were in fact created by and for America's Corporate Elite - people like the Koch brothers - who effectively launched the Tea Party movement.
It's quite terrifying to see just how good these people are at manipulating normal patriotic American citizens to vote against allowing access to health care and tax cuts for the super rich. I'm reminded of the way the generally decent German public were led into supporting the Nazi's by the use of fiendishly sophisticated propaganda.
One particularly revealing moment in the film is where one of the coordinator's explains what he does to raise the impact of right wing positions and weaken liberal ones - just go to any review site and put 5 stars on everything right wing, and 1 star on things like Michael Moore's Sicko.
Looking at some of the comments on the Guardian's web site (and others), it seems clear that right wing trolls are very active.
It is superb. Every one capable of rational thought should watch it. It demonstrates how the so-called "Grass Roots" movements such as the Tea Party and the protests about Obama's health care reforms were in fact created by and for America's Corporate Elite - people like the Koch brothers - who effectively launched the Tea Party movement.
It's quite terrifying to see just how good these people are at manipulating normal patriotic American citizens to vote against allowing access to health care and tax cuts for the super rich. I'm reminded of the way the generally decent German public were led into supporting the Nazi's by the use of fiendishly sophisticated propaganda.
One particularly revealing moment in the film is where one of the coordinator's explains what he does to raise the impact of right wing positions and weaken liberal ones - just go to any review site and put 5 stars on everything right wing, and 1 star on things like Michael Moore's Sicko.
Looking at some of the comments on the Guardian's web site (and others), it seems clear that right wing trolls are very active.
19 Aug 2011
Even better - How about an FTT of over 14%?
Just a quick follow up to my post yesterday where I showed that banks charge a financial transaction tax of over 10% when you change euros into pounds or vice versa. It can be even worse. I noted the Travelex buy and sell rates for the 18 different currencies that they were quoting, and calculated the ratio between the two.
For the following national currencies, the ratio is "only" 26-27% : Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA
But, for reasons that remain obscure, if you were stupid enough to want to exchange money from the Czech Republic, Croatia and Egypt, you will get clobbered with a difference of between 30 and 32%.
However, the prize for the most outrageous transaction tax goes to anyone wanting to exchage money from either Saudi Arabia or South Africa - for which Travelex has a difference of over 39%. Thus, if I wanted to buy 100 Saudi Riyals, Travelex would charge me €227.30. But when I change the 1000 Riyals back into euros, I would only get €163.50 back. I would have lost over 28% of the value in just two exchanges - an FTT of 14% on each transaction. Magical!!
It's a good job that Travelex UK "is committed to matching the best possible overall price in the UK on your travel money purchase". It would be horrible to imagine that they were not being scrupulously fair and reasonable.
It's funny that banks don't seem to make a big thing about these ratios. Difficult to find them published anywhere - although you can find the rates used by NatWest here - theirs have a differential between buy and sell of only 14-15% for the major currencies, but they go up to 31% for money from Peru and Costa Rica.
For the following national currencies, the ratio is "only" 26-27% : Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA
But, for reasons that remain obscure, if you were stupid enough to want to exchange money from the Czech Republic, Croatia and Egypt, you will get clobbered with a difference of between 30 and 32%.
However, the prize for the most outrageous transaction tax goes to anyone wanting to exchage money from either Saudi Arabia or South Africa - for which Travelex has a difference of over 39%. Thus, if I wanted to buy 100 Saudi Riyals, Travelex would charge me €227.30. But when I change the 1000 Riyals back into euros, I would only get €163.50 back. I would have lost over 28% of the value in just two exchanges - an FTT of 14% on each transaction. Magical!!
It's a good job that Travelex UK "is committed to matching the best possible overall price in the UK on your travel money purchase". It would be horrible to imagine that they were not being scrupulously fair and reasonable.
It's funny that banks don't seem to make a big thing about these ratios. Difficult to find them published anywhere - although you can find the rates used by NatWest here - theirs have a differential between buy and sell of only 14-15% for the major currencies, but they go up to 31% for money from Peru and Costa Rica.
18 Aug 2011
10% FTTs for bank users, zero for the banks
I'm sure that the banks are seriously worried about the possibility that Sarkozy and Merkel might succeed in their aim of introducing a financial transaction tax. They will no doubt claim that any such tax would be catastrophic for the economy etc etc.
Well, what about the financial transaction taxes that they impose on the public? Yesterday, for fun, I went to Toulouse airport and did the following. I purchased £100 from two different places, and then immediately, used the money to buy back euros. The result? In both cases, I lost more than 20% of my money with just two transactions - in other words, the effective FTT was over 10%.
Here's the first one, with Travelex.
I was charged €129.70 to buy £100, but only got €102.77 when I sold them back. It's simply the consequence of the difference between the "we sell" (vendons) rate of 0.7710 and the "we buy" (achetons) rate of 0.9730 - 26% higher. They trumpet the fact that they don't charge a commission. They don't need to. Note that this would be exactly the same rates if I had done the same thing with £1000 - it would have cost me €269.30.
Here's the other one - with Banque Populaire.
In this case, buying the £100 cost me €131.99 (including a €7.50 fee), but I only got €105.99 back when I changed back to euros.
How can banks possibly justify such transaction costs? Remember that the banks do $4 trillion in foreign exchange every day - it doesn't cost them anything. It's one rule for the rich, another for the poor.
I get the impression the these "sell/buy" ratios have gone through the roof - wasn't it more like 5% a decade or so ago? Who said that banks could charge anything they can get away with?
Here's a suggestion. In addition to imposing a modest 0.05 to 0.5% financial tax, how about saying that banks have to pay 50% of any transaction fees they charge to the government? That would generate a fair bit of revenue to help get public debt down and reduce the need for massive across the board cuts.
Finally, these outrageous fees for changing money are the best possible argument for the Euro. I am continously delighted to be able to pay for things and draw out money in all 17 Eurozone countries without extra costs. Of course, the banks would love the Euro to be broken up - that way they would be able to charge 10% every time people want to move from one country to another. We must not let them do it.
Well, what about the financial transaction taxes that they impose on the public? Yesterday, for fun, I went to Toulouse airport and did the following. I purchased £100 from two different places, and then immediately, used the money to buy back euros. The result? In both cases, I lost more than 20% of my money with just two transactions - in other words, the effective FTT was over 10%.
Here's the first one, with Travelex.
Here's the other one - with Banque Populaire.
How can banks possibly justify such transaction costs? Remember that the banks do $4 trillion in foreign exchange every day - it doesn't cost them anything. It's one rule for the rich, another for the poor.
I get the impression the these "sell/buy" ratios have gone through the roof - wasn't it more like 5% a decade or so ago? Who said that banks could charge anything they can get away with?
Here's a suggestion. In addition to imposing a modest 0.05 to 0.5% financial tax, how about saying that banks have to pay 50% of any transaction fees they charge to the government? That would generate a fair bit of revenue to help get public debt down and reduce the need for massive across the board cuts.
Finally, these outrageous fees for changing money are the best possible argument for the Euro. I am continously delighted to be able to pay for things and draw out money in all 17 Eurozone countries without extra costs. Of course, the banks would love the Euro to be broken up - that way they would be able to charge 10% every time people want to move from one country to another. We must not let them do it.
5 Aug 2011
We need to stop bailing out countries and fix the tax system instead
Stock markets are collapsing. £50 billion was wiped off the London Stock Market in one day, and we are told that governments have to put together another round of funding to provide more support for the Greek, Portuguese and Irish economies, shortly to be followed no doubt by packages for the Italian and Spanish economies. And how long before France and the UK become the next target of the speculators...
Reading the press you would think that there is absolutely no option apart from borrowing (or more likely printing) yet more money to get out of this mess and paying for everything with massive across the board cuts. Citizens are being told that they will have to pick up the tab in the form of higher taxes, massive cuts in services, job losses, pensions and so on.
No. This is wrong. The money is there. It's being used to do £4 trillion a day in currency speculation. It's being used to speculate on commodity markets. It's being used for all manner of totally pointless activities that have only one function - siphon money out of the system and put it in the pockets of the financial elite.
As I argued yesterday, we need to introduce a Financial Transaction Tax now. It's been voted for by the European Parliament. It has the approval of Merkel and Sarkozy. What are we waiting for?
The table shows data for the 17 countries in the Eurozone that I got from the huge data set provided by the IMF in april 2011. It provides information about Gross Government Debt, Revenue and Expenditure together with GDP for 2010 - all listed in billions of euros. Total debt for the Eurozone countries is now €7.7 trillion. That certainly sounds like a lot of debt. But, if you compare the figures with the values for financial transactions that I extracted from the BIS tables (for 2009 unfortunately), you can see that the numbers are totally dwarfed. In Belgium transactions exceeded GDP by 713:1. In Germany the ratio is 224:1. And even in countries like France, Italy and the Netherlands, the ratio of transactions to GDP exceeds 100:1.
Unfortunately, the BIS doesn't compile data for the other countries, and so we will have to guess. But, it seems highly likely that the average ration of 261:1 might provide a reasonable first guess for the value across the whole region. (Isn't it scandelous that no-one seems to have any real numbers for financial transactions?)
This means that we can estimate that total financial transactions within the Eurozone could be of the order of €2860 trillion. This number actually appears quite plausible given that the BIS total for the USA is $3800 trillion. The value for the Eurozone is roughly 500 times total government revenue from all the existing tax mechanisms (income tax, VAT, taxes on profits, social security and health contributions etc etc), meaning that they could all be abolished with an FTT of around 0.2%.
But in the present context, what is even more interesting is that the total Eurozone government debt of €7.7 trillion could be paid off very rapidly by a modest FTT. Governments simply have to decide whether they want to impose an FTT of about 0.28% which would pay it all off in 1 year, or maybe spread the repayment back over 5 years with a rate of only about 0.06%.
Who could possibly object to solving all the Eurozone crisis, and getting rid of all current taxes by imposing a very modest 0.3% Financial Transaction Tax?
Reading the press you would think that there is absolutely no option apart from borrowing (or more likely printing) yet more money to get out of this mess and paying for everything with massive across the board cuts. Citizens are being told that they will have to pick up the tab in the form of higher taxes, massive cuts in services, job losses, pensions and so on.
No. This is wrong. The money is there. It's being used to do £4 trillion a day in currency speculation. It's being used to speculate on commodity markets. It's being used for all manner of totally pointless activities that have only one function - siphon money out of the system and put it in the pockets of the financial elite.
As I argued yesterday, we need to introduce a Financial Transaction Tax now. It's been voted for by the European Parliament. It has the approval of Merkel and Sarkozy. What are we waiting for?
The table shows data for the 17 countries in the Eurozone that I got from the huge data set provided by the IMF in april 2011. It provides information about Gross Government Debt, Revenue and Expenditure together with GDP for 2010 - all listed in billions of euros. Total debt for the Eurozone countries is now €7.7 trillion. That certainly sounds like a lot of debt. But, if you compare the figures with the values for financial transactions that I extracted from the BIS tables (for 2009 unfortunately), you can see that the numbers are totally dwarfed. In Belgium transactions exceeded GDP by 713:1. In Germany the ratio is 224:1. And even in countries like France, Italy and the Netherlands, the ratio of transactions to GDP exceeds 100:1.
Unfortunately, the BIS doesn't compile data for the other countries, and so we will have to guess. But, it seems highly likely that the average ration of 261:1 might provide a reasonable first guess for the value across the whole region. (Isn't it scandelous that no-one seems to have any real numbers for financial transactions?)
This means that we can estimate that total financial transactions within the Eurozone could be of the order of €2860 trillion. This number actually appears quite plausible given that the BIS total for the USA is $3800 trillion. The value for the Eurozone is roughly 500 times total government revenue from all the existing tax mechanisms (income tax, VAT, taxes on profits, social security and health contributions etc etc), meaning that they could all be abolished with an FTT of around 0.2%.
But in the present context, what is even more interesting is that the total Eurozone government debt of €7.7 trillion could be paid off very rapidly by a modest FTT. Governments simply have to decide whether they want to impose an FTT of about 0.28% which would pay it all off in 1 year, or maybe spread the repayment back over 5 years with a rate of only about 0.06%.
Who could possibly object to solving all the Eurozone crisis, and getting rid of all current taxes by imposing a very modest 0.3% Financial Transaction Tax?
3 Aug 2011
Solving the debt crisis in 5 years with an automatically varying FTT
It's now nearly a year since I came up with the idea of replacing virtually all the current tax mechanisms (income tax, taxes on company profits, sales taxes, state health and pension contributions...) with a single fixed rate Financial Transaction Tax.
One recurring problem concerns the question of determining the rate to apply. While many people are now supporting low rates such as 0.05% as a way to limit speculation and finance specific programs, I have been proposing potentially higher rates - enough to allow all the other tax mechanisms to be removed.
Actually, the rates needed may not be very high. For example, given that financial transactions in the UK economy are at least £900 trillion a year, and total UK government revenue is currently £540 billion, an FTT of just 0.06% would be enough to abolish all the existing forms of revenue. In the USA, financial transactions are at least $3800 trillion a year, and given total government revenue of $4.6 trillion, this means that the break-even point would occur with a rate of just 0.12%. Even in France, where financial transactions are relatively modest compared with the financial giants that are the UK and USA, the latest numbers from the BIS suggest transactions running at around €250 trillion a year. With government revenue of €819 billion, an FTT of 0.33% would fit the bill.
This all looks very promising. But of course, some would argue that as soon as an FTT is implemented, the speculators would go elsewhere and the source of revenue would dry up. How can this be handled?
Here's a possible solution. Impose an FTT rate that is continuously updated to maintain government revenues at the desired value. If speculation starts to wain (something that would in my humble opinion be a very good thing), the FTT rate would automatically go up to compensate. Would the typical man in the street in the UK be terribly upset if the transaction tax went from 0.06% up to the 0.33% value in France? Of course not. Relative to the current situation where he is paying 20% VAT after already paying income tax, council taxes and so forth, he will always be better off. Indeed the only ones who might complain would be the hedge funds and traders.
I would propose going even further. As we all know, public debt in the USA has just reached $14.3 trillion dollars. Even if the Tea Party lunatics had their way and all government spending was banned and all taxes eliminated, there would still be an outstanding debt of $14.3 trillion. With current market interest rates (which may well increase if the USA's triple AAA status is downgraded), the US taxpayer would still be forced to pay out something like $1 trillion a year just in interest payments. The solution? Set the FTT value such that the entire $14.3 trillion is paid off over say a five year period. This would require about $5 trillion a year over the five year period which would require a further 0.13% FTT in addition to the 0.12% to replace the government's current revenues. A total of 0.25%, and the USA could be out of debt in five years without having to cut back on welfare, healthcare and all the rest. Hey, and Obama wouldn't even have to increase income tax on the super rich - he would be able to abolish income tax!
Let's try the idea out in the UK where the national debt is currently running at £2.2 trillion (if bank bailouts are included, which of course they should). Paying that off over 5 years would need around £500 billion a year. That's less that 0.05% of the £900 trillion in transactions. So, again you could pay off the entire national debt and cover all the government's expenses and abolish all the main forms of taxation with an FTT of little over 0.1%. Sounds sensible to me.
Finally, for France, where the national debt currently stands at around €1.6 trillion, this could be paid off over five years with around €300 billion a year, which could be achieved with just an extra 0.1% over the 0.33% needed to remplace the current sources of income.That's well under 0.5%, which is the rate of Stamp Duty in the UK, the amount that you have to pay the government every time you buy shares. That hasn't prevented the London Stock Exchange being a major centre for share trading - nor would it prevent people doing business in France.
But, finally, the beauty of the scheme lies in the fact that by having an automatically varying rate, the levels of revenue would remain static even as speculation dies away (or moves elsewhere). Since changing the FTT rate is effectively as simple as changing a single number, this would be trivial to implement.
It all seems so simple, clean and fair. Everyone is treated exactly the same, and all parts of the economy will contribute to getting things back on course. If you see any fallacies in my argumentation, please let me know. For the moment, I don't see any.
I invite any candidate in next year's Presidential election in France to put this in their program. I would predict that anyone who did would have a good chance of winning.
One recurring problem concerns the question of determining the rate to apply. While many people are now supporting low rates such as 0.05% as a way to limit speculation and finance specific programs, I have been proposing potentially higher rates - enough to allow all the other tax mechanisms to be removed.
Actually, the rates needed may not be very high. For example, given that financial transactions in the UK economy are at least £900 trillion a year, and total UK government revenue is currently £540 billion, an FTT of just 0.06% would be enough to abolish all the existing forms of revenue. In the USA, financial transactions are at least $3800 trillion a year, and given total government revenue of $4.6 trillion, this means that the break-even point would occur with a rate of just 0.12%. Even in France, where financial transactions are relatively modest compared with the financial giants that are the UK and USA, the latest numbers from the BIS suggest transactions running at around €250 trillion a year. With government revenue of €819 billion, an FTT of 0.33% would fit the bill.
This all looks very promising. But of course, some would argue that as soon as an FTT is implemented, the speculators would go elsewhere and the source of revenue would dry up. How can this be handled?
Here's a possible solution. Impose an FTT rate that is continuously updated to maintain government revenues at the desired value. If speculation starts to wain (something that would in my humble opinion be a very good thing), the FTT rate would automatically go up to compensate. Would the typical man in the street in the UK be terribly upset if the transaction tax went from 0.06% up to the 0.33% value in France? Of course not. Relative to the current situation where he is paying 20% VAT after already paying income tax, council taxes and so forth, he will always be better off. Indeed the only ones who might complain would be the hedge funds and traders.
I would propose going even further. As we all know, public debt in the USA has just reached $14.3 trillion dollars. Even if the Tea Party lunatics had their way and all government spending was banned and all taxes eliminated, there would still be an outstanding debt of $14.3 trillion. With current market interest rates (which may well increase if the USA's triple AAA status is downgraded), the US taxpayer would still be forced to pay out something like $1 trillion a year just in interest payments. The solution? Set the FTT value such that the entire $14.3 trillion is paid off over say a five year period. This would require about $5 trillion a year over the five year period which would require a further 0.13% FTT in addition to the 0.12% to replace the government's current revenues. A total of 0.25%, and the USA could be out of debt in five years without having to cut back on welfare, healthcare and all the rest. Hey, and Obama wouldn't even have to increase income tax on the super rich - he would be able to abolish income tax!
Let's try the idea out in the UK where the national debt is currently running at £2.2 trillion (if bank bailouts are included, which of course they should). Paying that off over 5 years would need around £500 billion a year. That's less that 0.05% of the £900 trillion in transactions. So, again you could pay off the entire national debt and cover all the government's expenses and abolish all the main forms of taxation with an FTT of little over 0.1%. Sounds sensible to me.
Finally, for France, where the national debt currently stands at around €1.6 trillion, this could be paid off over five years with around €300 billion a year, which could be achieved with just an extra 0.1% over the 0.33% needed to remplace the current sources of income.That's well under 0.5%, which is the rate of Stamp Duty in the UK, the amount that you have to pay the government every time you buy shares. That hasn't prevented the London Stock Exchange being a major centre for share trading - nor would it prevent people doing business in France.
But, finally, the beauty of the scheme lies in the fact that by having an automatically varying rate, the levels of revenue would remain static even as speculation dies away (or moves elsewhere). Since changing the FTT rate is effectively as simple as changing a single number, this would be trivial to implement.
It all seems so simple, clean and fair. Everyone is treated exactly the same, and all parts of the economy will contribute to getting things back on course. If you see any fallacies in my argumentation, please let me know. For the moment, I don't see any.
I invite any candidate in next year's Presidential election in France to put this in their program. I would predict that anyone who did would have a good chance of winning.
2 Aug 2011
How did the Tea Party do it?
How is it possible that the US has just agreed to trillions in spending cuts without any increase in taxation? George Monbiot's commentary in today's Guardian provides a chilling explanation. He explains the origins of the Tea Party movement. You might be forgiven for thinking that the Tea Party fanatics, who seem to be America's answer to the Taliban, were motivated by their revulsion by the massive bank bailouts. That is certainly what they would like to tell you. But, as Monbiot argues lucidly, this is actually nonsense. Here's the real origin of the Tea Party movement.
As I say... truly chilling. The power of the billionaire lobbyists seems without bounds.
The movement started with Rick Santelli's call on CNBC for a tea party of city traders to dump securities in Lake Michigan, in protest at Obama's plan to "subsidise the losers". In other words, it was a demand for a financiers' mobilisation against the bailout of their victims: people losing their homes. On the same day, a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP) set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organising Tea Party events. The movement, whose programme is still lavishly supported by AFP, took off from there.
So who or what is Americans for Prosperity? It was founded and is funded by Charles and David Koch. They run what they call "the biggest company you've never heard of", and between them they are worth $43bn. Koch Industries is a massive oil, gas, minerals, timber and chemicals company. In the past 15 years the brothers have poured at least $85m into lobby groups arguing for lower taxes for the rich and weaker regulations for industry. The groups and politicians the Kochs fund also lobby to destroy collective bargaining, to stop laws reducing carbon emissions, to stymie healthcare reform and to hobble attempts to control the banks. During the 2010 election cycle, AFP spent $45m supporting its favoured candidates.
But the Kochs' greatest political triumph is the creation of the Tea Party movement. Taki Oldham's film (Astro)Turf Wars shows Tea Party organisers reporting back to David Koch at their 2009 Defending the Dream summit, explaining the events and protests they've started with AFP help. "Five years ago," he tells them, "my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity. It's beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organisation."
AFP mobilised the anger of people who found their conditions of life declining, and channelled it into a campaign to make them worse. Tea Party campaigners take to the streets to demand less tax for billionaires and worse health, education and social insurance for themselves.
As I say... truly chilling. The power of the billionaire lobbyists seems without bounds.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
But even this very conservative figure of 1310 trillion euros, is about 170 times the total Eurozone debt (currently standing at 7.8 trillion euros - figures from the IMF), meaning that a roughly a financial transaction tax of little more than 0.1% could pay off the entire Eurozone public debt in around 5 years. No more eurobonds, no more Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish debt crises.
And if you think this looks impressive in the Eurozone countries, try the same thing in the UK, where financial transactions are at least 900 trillion pounds per year. The entire UK debt could be repaid in a few years with an FTT of less than 0.05%.
Will Sarkozy and Merkel be able to get such a system adopted? It almost all depends on the UK government. The European Parliament has already voted strongly in favour, but I fear that the City will do everything in its power to block what seems to me to be a simple and fair solution to a great many problems.