BIS Transaction Figures for 2013 : Over €2 quadrillion in just 5 Eurozone Countries

If you download the BIS's excel sheet for the 23 individual countries in their dataset, you can get all the details for each country in the local currency.

I've compiled all the data for the five countries in the dataset that belong to the Eurozone - France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands.  Here's the result, together with the details of where the numbers come from for each country.

As you can see, Germany has really taken off in the last year, to reach a total of over €1.1 quadrillion euros - up roughly 35% on the previous year. They are followed by Belgium at €374 trillion, France at €259 trillion, Italy at €209 trillion and the Netherlands at €84.5 trillion.

Together, those five countries within the Eurozone generated a total of over €2 quadrillion in transactions (€2088 trillion to be precise) - up 16.8% on the previous year, and completely demolishing all previous records.

So, message to Mario Draghi. Why not just impose a modest Financial Transaction Tax on all those transactions? It would be very nice to know just what proportion of the €2 quadrillion are denominated in euros, but I guess that sort of information is currently "nav" (Not Available - like so much that happens in the financial markets). But, in any case, there is clearly massive potential here for generating much needed revenue for Eurozone governments, or - even better? - an unconditional basic income for the Eurozone's 330 million citizens.