Foreign exchanges part 5

None other than James Tobin (who died in 2002) recommended in 2001 that banks be taxed not on each distinct operation, but rather over a week to allow for these market adjustments. That would have left 80 percent of the transactions outside the Tobin Tax. For a number of years, advocates of the latter led many people to believe that it was normal for speculators to have their speculative gains subjected to taxation. Nobody ever stated that this was a tax not on gains but on movement. Nobody ever openly recognized that speculative gains were in fact taxed in most countries in any case.
Such issues give rise to strong feelings. An article in French daily Le Monde on October 23, 2001 commented:
According to the organizers, from the 19th through the 21st of October there were 4,000 people assembled in the classrooms and amphitheaters of Berlin Tech. The police were not present and provided no figures. It is nonetheless clear that participants at the founding congress of the German branch of the Attac protest movement were quite numerous. Of French origin, the ‘‘Association for the taxation of financial transactions and for aid to citizens’’ is growing rapidly in Europe, publicizing the acronym and concerns that made it famous … Less abrupt in their formulations but just as categorical, others denounced the war, asserting that the tragic events in New York and Washington corroborated their theories according to which it was the world market that fed the flames of terrorism. Each speaker denied being anti-American and proclaimed his horror of terrorism, but the long and unremitting reminders of the interventions of the US Army in many areas these past 50 years limited the scope of the affirmation and at the same time clearly assessed responsibilities: the United States and the wholesale globalization imposed by America bear exclusive responsibility for what happened there.
The ATTAC (Action for a Tobin Tax for the Assistance of Citizens) was created in France in 1998 by Le Monde Diplomatique, a subsidiary of the French newspaper. It would seem that the chickens had come home to roost. Once again, people were hoodwinked by a dollop of intellectual terrorism. Once again, people succumbed to the temptation to subscribe to simplistic recipes at a time when problem resolution is highly complex, necessitates a great deal of time and presupposes basic minimal humility.