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Geithner Opposes "Tobin Tax" on Financial Transactions

Sunday 08 November 2009

A tax on financial transactions could serve as a means to tamp down potentially manipulative instantaneous trading tactics and to pay back massive bailout debts to governments around the globe according to supporters of the tax.

Opponents argue that a tax on financial transactions - also known as a "Tobin Tax," named after the late economist James Tobin - would reduce the flow of capital around the world and hurt businesses world wide.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner indicated that the Obama administration does not support such a tax during an interview with Sky News after wrapping up a meeting of the G20 in St. Andrews, Scotland.

"A day-by-day financial transaction tax is not something we are prepared to support," Geither said, adding, "this idea has been around for a long time ... I think frankly the experiences are mixed."

Truthout recently published an Op-Ed by Ellen Hodgson Brown  who advocates strongly for a "Tobin Tax" as a means for making the financial institutions who brought about the financial sector collapse of 2008 pay for the devastation and chaos they created.

On Saturday British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested such a tax, if implemented across the international financial landscape, could be effective.

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz endorsed the feasibility and effectiveness of such a tax in October.

"The financial sector polluted the global economy with toxic assets and now they ought to clean out," Stiglitz said in Istanbul, Turkey on October 6.

-Matt Renner

  

Comments

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Geithner would oppose it

 Sun, 11/08/2009 - 20:13 — Anonymous (not verified)
Geithner would oppose it ,Would`t he? Sack him!

Of course they don't support

 Sun, 11/08/2009 - 21:31 — Anonymous (not verified)
Of course they don't support the Tobin Tax, it would apply to their paymasters on wall street. They obviously don't care about the American people.

'day-by-day tax..' isn't any

 Sun, 11/08/2009 - 21:44 — Anonarcmous (not verified)
'day-by-day tax..' isn't any more difficult than the usual sales taxes we are used to--after all to pay for the location, privilege, & all the support services & energies used toward these ends.

You can see where Geithner's

 Sun, 11/08/2009 - 22:38 — gehan (not verified)
You can see where Geithner's golfer buddies at Goldman might not be too happy with a tax like this, especially after all the effort they put into hooking their computer up with the stock exchange's. Brown by contrast is not a big time golfer.

Geithner is not only the

 Sun, 11/08/2009 - 23:23 — peterjkraus (not verified)
Geithner is not only the wrong man for the job, he's a catastrophe in waiting for the Obama administration. If the current administration does nothing to keep the financial industry in line, it will go down as a failed experiment in "bipartisanship", a policy hardly any Obama voter wanted. The Democrats had a margin of votes that gave them an almost unparalelled mandate to govern. Instead of fulfilling that mandate, the administration lets itself be held hostage by so-called conservative Democrats, religious nuts and me-firsters like Lieberman. I had expected more from Obama, more from Joe Biden, and a lot more from Rahm Emanuel.

Geithner is AGAINST anything

 Mon, 11/09/2009 - 01:08 — Older Redneck (not verified)
Geithner is AGAINST anything that might inconvenience Wall St. and slow their thefts down in any way. If Obama loses in 2012, it will be due to the industrious work of Geithner and Larry Summers. These guys are POISONOUS !!!

The only businesses this

 Mon, 11/09/2009 - 02:24 — Anonymous (not verified)
The only businesses this would hurt are the huge financial institutions and the speculators. They pay virtually nothing in taxes now, and all this would do is make them pay something closer to what ordinary people and small businesses pay in taxes. Geithner is nothing but a promoter of the "too large to fail" financial institutions that add NOTHING of value to the economy. All they do is make a few people obscenely rich, taking money from the rest of us AND from the government. I wish Obama was not so stupid when it came to financial matters and the economy, but he obviously knows nothing at all. Either that, or he really is an elitist like the Republicans said, meaning he is one of them.

Every day I am more

 Mon, 11/09/2009 - 12:31 — Anonymous (not verified)
Every day I am more disgusted with the shoe-shiners in the White House. Yet after all the screaming about the big five I´m now convinced that they are fleas compared to our professional military that owns the US and wants the last drop of oil in the world for themselves. Watch this - Hasan will never appear for an interview - he´ll disappear and be forgotten like thousands of others everyday.

Geithner is Owned and

 Mon, 11/09/2009 - 13:20 — Dsvid (not verified)
Geithner is Owned and Operated by Wall Street. He is one of the good old boys club, and has long done the bidding of the banker elites, and is one of them. Much of the Obama admin is populated by former Goldman Sachs operatives. The bigger picture is that country governments are also owned and operated by corporate elites. Countries are mere subsidiaries of World Inc. Presidents and Treasury Secretaries are mere puppets. Look at the facts of who gets the money and who calls the shots. We are ruled by a multinational oligarchy of fascists.

Why not try the tax for a

 Mon, 11/09/2009 - 14:31 — Anonymous (not verified)
Why not try the tax for a few years? See if it is manageable, if it adds anything to the bottom line of the US (to defray other expenses... like health care), if it slows the breakneck speed of our "roll the dice" banking giants? Why not try? Why not? Let's try something!