If we want to punish the unrepentant banking industry for causing the economic downturn then why not impose a transaction tax, or continue the special bonus taxes that have been paid by the banks for the past few years.
Despite claims that trading will flee jurisdictions that impose a transactions tax, such taxes exist today in the U.K., China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and other countries.
Mr. Hollande has advocated a series of mostly incremental changes to promote growth: strengthening the European Investment Bank, creating European "stability" bonds to finance infrastructure projects, imposing a financial transaction tax and getting the European Central Bank to ease up on its inflation targets.
Many banks avoided falling victim to such attacks by imposing a minimum transaction size that removed the fractional error, said Mr Beardsley.
So it seems that the Post was proposing to make a little extra money by imposing a modest transaction cost on a process that already occurs.
For starters, by imposing a financial transaction tax, the new Britain could send a positive signal across the Channel by finally joining the rest of Europe in nudging finance away from excessive speculation.
Here's another fact that these GOP budgets conveniently fail to mention: that future shortfall is easily remedied through such measures as lifting the "payroll tax cap" for high and extremely high earners, imposing a financial transaction tax on Wall Street, and increasing the average American's payroll tax by literally a few dollars a month.
In late 2009, as Brazil raced out of recession and money began to pour in, the authorities switched direction, initially imposing a financial-transactions tax of 2% on foreign purchases of stocks and bonds.
The market's increasingly dangerous separation from the economic fundamentals would be better served by limiting stock buybacks, imposing a stock transactions tax, and rolling back the tax cuts that are feeding the market and creating a risky long-term deficit and debt increase.
