President Obama: Push thru Congress a Financial Transaction Tax

A Financial Transaction Tax would apply to purchases and sales of derivatives, options and stocks above $100,000.00 per year and it would be small, half a penny on each dollar of the transaction value. It would effectively be a "speculation tax", because it would hit hard at short-term high volume trading as opposed to sober, long-term investment, which is what most small and institutional investors do. Such Tax was already in effect from 1914 to 1966, and a version of it was advocated by the late Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin as a means to curb foreign exchange speculation in the 70's. This tax could raise badly needed revenue, while having little effect on most American pocketbooks and reducing the devastation risk of of runaway speculative trading on Wall Street. According to a joint report from the Cent!er for Economic and Policy Research and the Political Economy Research Institute, it could raise as much as $350 billion annually.Therefore, the financial transaction tax should be an integral and important component of any "fiscal cliff" negotiations.