Bernie Sanders Takes It to Wall Street With Financial Transactions Tax" cheers Dean Baker

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. Obama thought about it

DeFazio noted that in 2009 Obama was “very interested” in a financial transactions tax, but said “unfortunately it was assigned to Larry Summers and Timmy Geithner, who were both absolutely opposed to it, and they deep-sixed it and never brought anything back to him.” (This was reported in Ron Suskind’s book Confidence Men.) “Well, they’re both gone, thankfully,” said DeFazio.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/173134/financial-transactions-tax-introduced-again-can-it-pass-time

And as the article notes:

There are three points people should understand about a FTT. The first is that it can raise an enormous amount of money. A FTT could be imposed at different rates. Sanders proposed following the rate structure in a bill put forward by Minneapolis Congressman Keith Ellison. Eleven countries in the European Union are working to implement a set of FTTs that would tax stock trades at a rate of 0.1 percent and trades of most derivative instruments at the rate of 0.01 percent.

The UK already has one at 0.5% ('stamp duty reserve tax'), but stock exchange 'recognised intermediaries' don't have to pay it.