Comments on: Trash the Transfer Tax!

By: David Merkel

David Merkel — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:23:10 +0000

Well then, I gave you a great number of logical arguments. Why aren’t they compelling to you?

By: polit2k

polit2k — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:50:59 +0000

I’ve yet to hear a good logical argument against this proposed tax except it’s billing as “Let Wall Street Pay for Wall Street’s Bailout Act of 2009″ which is a stupid way of selling the concept.

Governments ww need tax revenues and they’ll get them wherever they can. This looks like an easy sell and very cheap to collect and don’t assume it won’t end up much higher than 0.25%.

By: matt

matt — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:48:34 +0000

One of the reasons the U.S. capital markets haven’t taken as much of a beating as the ROTW (rest of the world) is because of their liquidity. In crisis times, liquidity is just one more safety buffer.

Laws like this do a lot of bad things, but exporting liquidity to other capital markets with the capacity to handle it is a major result.

Additionally, this will make markets less efficient because there will be a larger arbitrage barrier.

Finally, more volatility. yup.

By: Kieran

Kieran — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:43:48 +0000

With the number of worldwide exchanges and ability of money to flow easily from one to the next, this would be a disastrous law to pass.

By: KevinMorrow

KevinMorrow — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:15:04 +0000

Just curious, but would the passage of such legislation move the bond markets out of the US to avoid the taxation? Thus creating more liquidity outside the US. And if so, how would that impact the Treasury market? Would the tax apply to Treasury trades as well? If so, yikes!