Congressman Keith Ellison“A lot of people in Washington like to talk about reducing the debt and deficits. Well if you really care about reducing the deficit, how about asking Wall Street speculators to pay their fair share? This bill will add a tax of a fraction of a percent on transactions made by the same Wall Street firms and stock traders who crashed our economy in 2008. This tax alone will generate up to $300 billion a year in revenue, stabilizing the deficit and allowing us to invest in the things that matter—education, roads and bridges, and health care for our seniors and veterans.”- Rep. Keith Ellison
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Chief Deputy Whip, reintroduced the Inclusive Prosperity Act (H.R. 1579) today, which adds a tax of a fraction of a percent on transactions done by Wall Street firms and stock traders. Ellison was joined by leaders of National Nurses United, former Goldman Sachs investment banker Wallace Turbeville, Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica, and activists George Goehl and Jennifer Flynn.
The tax would reduce harmful financial market speculation, discourage high-volume, high-speed trading, and slow down the proliferation of ever more complex derivatives.
In 2011, 40 countries had a similar tax, as did the U.S. until 1966. A financial transaction tax has been recommended by business leaders and economists including Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Pollin, and Larry Summers. After the 1987 Wall Street crash, a financial transaction tax was endorsed by Bob Dole and President George H.W. Bush.
The full text of the bill along with a one-page fact sheet are attached. You can find photos from the press conference here.
http://ellison.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=907&catid=86
Inclusive Prosperity…. where do these ELF-controlled zombies come up with such utter nonsense? People need real jobs, not wealth redistribution (with a nice chunk taken by the middle man in moving the funds from one pocket to the other).
Mr. Ellison, the Sunni Progressive, knows about as much about the financial industry as those froot-loops, Dodd & Frank. It is a bandaid on a systemic cancer and will change nothing for the better. It would be smart to reinstate Glass-Steagal, to eliminate the derivatives game, to decentralize the banking system to what it was 40 years ago, to let the multinationals self-finance. Too few people control too much money in the present system and hell will freeze over before they are held accountable, much less pay anybody anything.
Ending the Fed would immediately end the pumping of money into Wall St.
“Fair Share” is such a crock… only small, marxist minds think of such things as being anything but counterproductive.
High speed trading is not going away since Goldman Sachs owns that bat & ball. They run the White House Plunge Protection Team with their micro-second front-running, so nothing will change there. It would cut into their billion dollar bonus program.
Every day I wish everyone in DC & Wall St. were on the moon for all the good they do We the People.