The giant cries of protest sweeping across the country are starting to reverberate in the halls of Congress. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR) are proposing a Wall Street Tax. Their bill would establish a tiny financial transaction tax of 0.03% on every single trade of stocks, bonds, options, futures, swaps, and creditdefault swaps.
I think this is a great idea, and Congress should pass the bill. Rebuild the Dream and MoveOn.org started a petition so you can show support for the Wall Street Tax.
Notably, a Wall Street Taxis in the Contract for the American Dream , the 10-point plan to fix our economy that more than 131,000 people created earlier this year, through a grassroots, bottom-up process. To date, more than 300,000 people have signed the Contract for the American Dream. In other words, the idea of a Wall Street Tax is already popular.
The Wall Street Tax would be a tiny cost for those of us socking away our savings for retirement or our children's education -- the average person paying into a 401(k) would pay only one dollar per year.
But Wall Street traders could no longer bet thousands of times a second for free. Much of the risk in today's marketcomes from rapid-fire"flash trading," where financial firms use computer algorithms to make thousands of trades per second. This doesn't add any real value to the market or to our economy.
When we buy something of real value, like a winter coat for our kids, we pay a sales tax, and rightly so. Yet these Wall Street speculators pay zero taxes while making a fortune passing electrons back and forth millions of times a day, allthe while destabilizing our economy.
The Harkin-DeFazio Wall Street Tax is common sense. The concept has been around for a while. Hundreds of economists and responsible investorshave long called for it, including Nobel Laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, plus stock market billionaire Warren Buffett and former Goldman Sachs Chairman John Whitehead.
This idea is already law inseveral countries, including financial centers like the UK and Hong Kong. And the European Union is currently considering a much steeper version of what's on the table in theU.S.
The Wall Street Tax would raise somewhere between $700 billion and$1.2 trillion over ten years, critical funds we need to create jobs and protect vital programs.
Meanwhile, the Super Committee has been charged with finding$1.5 trillion in deficit reductions and has floated the idea of targeting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Notice: the Wall Street Tax would cover nearly all of the Super Committee's mandated deficit reductions.

Members of Congress should take note: If they vote against the 99% on this bill, they should be prepared for the 99% to vote against them next November.

didn't Van Jones had to leave in Disgrace?
Communist-Affiliations and all !
OWS!
A Real "Grassroots Movement" organize by the Democrat extreme Left.
Now the rest try cash in on it!

Two Sad Sacks of the Democrat Party!

you really make it out as if that was a new Bill!
It's been pending since '09!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeFazio_financial_transaction_tax


and it simply would add to the Cost of doing Business,since the Costs would be passed on to the Investor!
You can't Tax yourself into Prosperity no more than you can lift yourself in a Bucket you're standing in,as Churchill so aptly observed!


Obama: "We can't cut our way to prosperity, but we sure can spend our way to oblivion

Somebody had to say it!

It's interesting what you can find by poking around on the WWW a bit!

You mean "scary" don't you!??!!!?

Both,I guess!