Tobin Tax now supported by Japan, Germany, UK, France and Australia

[muriel_volestrangler]

Japanese Vice Finance Minister Naoki Minezaki said the nation should impose a tax on financial transactions to curb market volatility that could threaten economic growth.

“We’re seeing speculative funds flowing carelessly around the world -- one day in stocks and real estate other times in oil and grains -- and this is destroying the lives of ordinary people,” Minezaki wrote in an e-mail to supporters and reporters on Feb. 15. “We have to implement the Tobin Tax as part of international solidarity,” he said, adding that the levy could also boost revenue.

U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week said the world’s leading economies were close to agreeing a global bank tax and he wants to conclude a deal at the Group of 20 summit in June, the Financial Times reported. Government officials in France, Germany and Australia have backed the idea of the Tobin Tax, a levy on trading stocks, bonds, currencies and derivatives.
...
Although the idea now in circulation is sometimes called a Tobin Tax, it goes beyond the levy on currency transactions that American economist James Tobin proposed in the 1970s.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aOYvwYcuJD5I

OK, so this is more than Tobin proposed; but perhaps that's because the betting in derivatives that we see now probably wasn't even imagined in the 1970s.

[aquart]

1. Any word on outlawing derivatives?

[DBoon]

2. when derivatives are outlawed ...

only outlaws will do calculus