G20 scraps plans for universal bank tax

[Ed Barrow]

Source: Reuters

The world's top economies scrapped plans for a universal global bank tax on Saturday, giving countries plenty of wiggle room over how to make banks pay for their bailouts in future.

Finance ministers from the Group of 20 countries ended a two-day meeting to review progress on a string of initiatives agreed last year to make the financial system safer and protect taxpayers from having to pay for bank rescues again.

Attempts to introduce a global bank levy were finally ditched in the face of opposition from Japan, Canada and Brazil whose banks needed no public aid during the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.

"There is no agreement to proceed with an ex ante bank tax," said Canadian Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6540B120100605

[Joanne98]

1. They were never going to do it. Just PR for the peasants.

[valerief]

2. +1 trillion

[Lorien]

5. Exactly.

:grr:

[gmoney]

3. heaven forbid we tax banks...

[OnlinePoker]

4. You tax banks, you're just taxing consumers

They'll just pass the tax along as higher service charges. I for one applaud Stephen Harper for standing up to the Eurozone people who wanted to do this. Canada's banks are solid and well regulated. Almost none of the crap that happened elsewhere happened here so why should our banks be taxed to put money into a global pool for other countries that don't regulate as well as we do?

In the end, I'll stick with my credit union, but even those are consolidating into larger entities now. At least there I have the illusion that I have some say in how it's run by voting on the board members.