Excerpt from BBC News, 19 September 2009
'French President Nicolas Sarkozy will urge fellow G20 leaders to introduce a special tax to reduce risky behaviour by banks, the BBC has learned.
Mr Sarkozy wants a levy known as a Tobin Tax to be applied to every financial transaction. The move is aimed at cutting excessively speculative trades and encouraging long-term decision-making.
But senior EU officials told the BBC that the chances of getting a global agreement were "less than minimal".
'French President Nicolas Sarkozy will urge fellow G20 leaders to introduce a special tax to reduce risky behaviour by banks, the BBC has learned.
Mr Sarkozy wants a levy known as a Tobin Tax to be applied to every financial transaction. The move is aimed at cutting excessively speculative trades and encouraging long-term decision-making.
But senior EU officials told the BBC that the chances of getting a global agreement were "less than minimal".
The proposal does not yet have the formal backing of the EU or Germany - France's largest trading partner - and according to the BBC's business reporter Joe Lynam, it is widely expected to face resistance from Britain and the US, home to the world's largest financial centres...
The Tobin Tax is named after the US economist James Tobin, who first suggested it in the 1970s.
While it was originally supposed to be used for aid for developing countries, it could now be used to fund some of the bailouts in the financial industry or the multi-billion dollar stimulus packages under way to kick-start economies around the world.
The idea was resurrected in August this year by Lord Adair Turner, the chairman of Britain's financial watchdog, the FSA, as a way of providing buffers against another economic slowdown...
According to our correspondent, the notion of a Tobin Tax is likely to be referred by the G20 to the Financial Stability Forum - the club of the world's top central bankers and financial regulators - to assess and translate into a workable set of rules to which all countries might be able to agree...'
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave your comment here. Please note these stories are posted for information rather than for debate; if you wish to disagree with something posted, no problem, but since I post both things that I do and don't support, it would be appreciated if the criticism was about the issue.