This policy has two consequences at the macro level: on one hand, it has a certain stabilizing effects on oil and US dollar markets, limiting the number of speculative transactions and their size; on the other hand, it induces the speculators to find agreements with real economic agents, which are profitable for both parts.
They also think the tax can help deter more speculative transactions, which may provide little benefit to the real economy.
French and German policy makers see this as a "Robin Hood tax," a way of discouraging speculative transactions and raising cash from the bankers who provoked the financial crisis.
Singapore is also closer to fair value, according to The Economist's long-run average ratio of house prices to rents.The government has been trying to dampen things down by targeting speculative transactions.
The lawsuit, filed by a pair of veteran political activists from the La Jolla area of San Diego, asserts that A.I.G. and two large banks engaged in a variety of fraudulent and speculative transactions, running up losses well into the billions of dollars.
That same quarter, the charges say, Mr. Causey also worked to disguise huge profits that Enron had earned from energy trading in California during that state's power crisis, which would have signaled to the marketplace that the company was engaged in more speculative transactions than it had disclosed.
Rusnak, like Leeson, may have been trading desperately to cover up past losses on purely speculative transactions.
We can have doubts also about whether an FTT would contribute to the prevention of a future financial collapse, as some have argued it would do by discouraging speculative transactions.
Not only is he against reinstating Glass-Steagall, but he also wants to weaken the "Volcker Rule," a part of the Dodd-Frank Act that was meant to place restrictions on various kinds of speculative transactions by banks that might not benefit their customers.
But some of it may reflect non-speculative transactions, such as foreign borrowing by Chinese firms.
