kos: Wall Street, pay for your own damn mess.

[Coexist]

0.25% trading fee

by kos
Thu Sep 25, 2008 at 03:49:57 PM PDT

Why isn't this idea gaining more "traction"?

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. <...> advocated a new government fee of .25 percent of every stock transaction to ensure that the government can recoup funds to pay for the aid that it provides to lenders. “If this is truly such a catastrophe, I don’t see how anybody can object to a one-quarter of one percent fee,” DeFazio said. Others who attended the session said that proposal seemed to be gaining little traction.

Wall Street (and their enablers in both parties) want the taxpayers to shoulder the entire cost. Heavens forbid if Wall Street itself have to shoulder any of the burden.

Now 0.25 percent might be too high. I don't know. How about a tax per transaction? It looks like normal volume at the Dow is about 4 billion daily transactions. Slap a penny surcharge on every one of those transactions, and we're talking $40 million raised, and that's not including the NASDAQ and other markets (the Chicago exchanges, etc.). Over the course of the year, that would approach $10 billion. Hmmm.

Let's make that surcharge $0.25. That would be $1 billion raised per day, or about $240 billion raised in a year. That sounds better.

And yeah, it would suck for Wall Street, since that's real money out of their pockets, but they created the mess. They should be the ones paying to clean it up. Better the money come out of their pockets than ours.

What do you think? Personally, I like the idea.

[tridim]

1. Now that's a good idea!

Of course the traders will never let it happen, they want free money instead.

[SmokingJacket]

2. I love it.

I've always been in favor of one cleaning up one's own messes.

[Coexist]

3. it makes sense.

[ddeclue]

4. I'm all FOR this idea and it has nothing to do with paying anything back:

The problem with Wall Streeters is that they are "get rich quick" types who utterly kill companies with their need to have a quick and unrealistic quarterly profit and a quick and unrealistic rise in their stock values.

If they had to sit on their stocks for a while they'd stop treating Wall Street like it was Vegas - it's INVESTING, not SPECULATION, and not GAMBLING.

If company executives could know this then they would be able to conduct long term research and development projects, and grow and develop the company rather than exploit the workers and the assets for short term gain and forget about the long term.

This is why they are willing to outsource our jobs and sell America down the river - for a quick buck.

If it were mine to decide, short term capital gains would be taxed at 100%, long term capital gains would be taxed as though they were wage income, and dividends would be taxed at 15%.

Doug D.

[jpgray]

5. Provide Wall Street with a "rake?"

:)

[qanda]

6. That's a great idea!

[Coexist]

7. yes it is.

[beachmom]

8. So I guess Kos doesn't have a 401 (k) or investments.

I've never been a fan of populism, but this is ridiculous. If Wall Street goes down we ALL go down. Sigh.

[chalky]

10. Seriously? Wall Street will go down over .25%?

If that's the case, we're in deeper doo doo than even $700B could get us out of.

[HamdenRice]

12. I thought he was proposing something simplistic too, till I read it

A trades tax is actually quite feasible and reasonable. There used to be one.

[TexasObserver]

9. the Brits have such a transfer tax at .25%, that's 0025 x dollars

It works and it raises billions.

We should have that fee as part of any deal.

[HamdenRice]

11. An excellent idea. There used to be a local NY City tax on trades

till they persuaded, I think it was Koch, to abolish it to be "competitive" with other markets.

So it's perfectly feasible.