To: The United States House of Representatives and The United States Senate
Put Main Street First. Tax Wall Street Trades!
Wall Street speculators are getting rich by executing reckless short term stock trades – as many as a half million a week – sometimes holding “investments” for just a few seconds. These manipulative gimmicks produce nothing of value. Yet, they make billions for wealthy speculators while wreaking havoc on the stock market and creating flash-crashes and instability for the rest of us. It’s time to rein in the Wall Street flash-traders by imposing a modest 0.03% tax on every trade. The stock market should be about investing, not gambling!
Why is this important?
Computerized “flash-trading” is one trick hedge funders use to manipulate the market for their sole benefit. Essentially, they use a computer program to execute millions of trades in a short period of time – sometimes holding an “investment” for a matter of microseconds. These trades produce nothing of value while destabilizing the market, driving up costs for pension funds and putting everyone else’s investments at risk – yet, it gets a small group of traders very rich.
I’ve proposed to tax each stock trade at a modest 0.03% – that’s 3 cents for every $100 in trades!
That would be a great thing for America. The tax would drive out traders that created market instability and lead to the “flash crash.” It would raise $40 billion a year that could be invested in education, infrastructure, and other vital economic needs. The stock market should be about making smart long-term investments in growing companies, not electronic insta-trades that treat Wall Street like a casino and destabilize the entire economy.
I’ve proposed to tax each stock trade at a modest 0.03% – that’s 3 cents for every $100 in trades!
That would be a great thing for America. The tax would drive out traders that created market instability and lead to the “flash crash.” It would raise $40 billion a year that could be invested in education, infrastructure, and other vital economic needs. The stock market should be about making smart long-term investments in growing companies, not electronic insta-trades that treat Wall Street like a casino and destabilize the entire economy.