Geithner, Brown Split on Tobin Tax at G-20 Meeting

[depakid]

Source: Bloomberg

Group of 20 governments split on whether to tax financial trading as part of a broader strategy to ensure the global economy’s expansion is less crisis-prone. U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a meeting of finance chiefs in St. Andrews, Scotland today that such a levy could prevent excessive risk taking and fund future bank rescues, adding momentum to a debate begun by France. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said a “day-by-day” tax on speculation is “not something we’re prepared to support.”

The dispute over a so-called Tobin tax suggests that the unity the G-20 showed in battling the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is unraveling as its focus intensifies on how far to rein in the banking system. The outcome may determine the strength of markets as the recovery builds as well as the scope for banks to profit from them.

“The initial market reaction to talk of a Tobin tax is likely to be negative,” said Julian Jessop, a former U.K. Treasury official and now chief international economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London.

A day after U.S. data showed the unemployment rate rose more than economists forecast to a 26-year high, the G-20 also agreed to keep stimulating their economies until recoveries take hold. They mapped out a time plan to show how they will make growth across the world more even and less reliant on Chinese savings and U.S. domestic demand.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=aSDW5ujCsxvQ

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Change we can believe in, eh?

This isn't even center right- given the current circumstances, the deficit and the bailouts.

This is straight up 1980's Republican policy.

[bluestateguy]

1. We could probably cut income taxes for everybody if we had the Tobin tax

To be fair, it's not an idea that has ever attracted much support in the US political system, period. Clinton's team never supported it, and Charlie Rangel has always opposed it.

[naaman fletcher]

8. I'd be happy with that, but Brown wants to use it do bail out failed banks...

The Tobin tax may or may not prevent excessive risk taking. But you know what encourages it more than anything else? Knowing that the government will be there to bail you out if you screw up.

[Zynx]

2. It's a good idea, but it has never had much support here. Hell, the Democrats repealed

a similar tax we used to have until 1966. Rather than using this as another chance to use "Change we can believe in, eh?" it would be wise to remember that somethings were never promised by Obama. This is one of them.

[depakid]

3. This is simply a matter of responsible fiscal and economic policy

Whether this particular measure was promised or not is irrelevant to the fact that here again the administration is pandering to Wall Street speculators who caused this crash (and others) at the expense of everyone else in the nation.

Here we have a set of policies by which those who caused the problem(s) can be held accountable and pay for their own bailouts. This along with discouraging the sort behavior (including rapid computer trading that manipulated the market) -that's gotten the banksters into trouble in the first place.

[Go2Peace]

5. no solutions, only pandering. How much damage will these Obama appointees be allowed to do?

I sure wish the president would let them go and get some better, more thoughtful, and less greedy leadership.

[depakid]

7. Not damage, as the poster above mentioned- just fixing things

that need fixing with policies that make sense and help us all to solve problems while at the same time, preventing old ones from coming back to bite us yet again.

[Go2Peace]

9. Please educate me on all the financial reform that is being brought forward?

[depakid]

10. Provided that the Senate takes care of health care business, you'll get more than a dose of that

In the first months of the New Year.

[AllentownJake]

4. Oh Timmeh there you are again

talking against anything that makes any kind of common sense.

[The Magistrate]

6. Such a Tax is Necessary, Sir

[Toucano]

11. Geithner must go. n-t

[depakid]

12. How about just being responsible and enacting appropriate public policy for the 21st Century

[Toucano]

13. It's not in him.

He's a part of the problem. He can't be a part of the solution.