....but, sadly, I bet it doesn't go through...

idea whose time has come.

I hope they define it to exclude withdrawals from savings accounts. Interest rates are in the hundredths of one percent, and a fee of three cents per one hundred dollars could wipe that out!

"It would apply to traded stocks and bonds, derivative contracts, options, puts, forward contracts, swaps and other complex Wall Street instruments. It would not cover the initial issuance of any stocks or bonds, nor covers or loans in the form of stock."

http://www.thenation.com/blog/173134/financial-transactions-tax-introduced-again-can-it-pass-time#

Basically, this taxes high-frequency traders, who are the ones responsible for all sorts of wall street insanity. It is that group that lobbied so hard against this the last time.

If 0.03 generates $352 billion, a dollar will generate $1.173 trillion enough to solve some real problems.
-Airplane.

Your decimal point is in the wrong place. The correct number would be 11.73 trillion. Crazy huh?

They take from 2% to 5% every year weather or not we add money and weather or not we made any profit or loss. I seriously believe we need a 1% tax on all stock an derivative trades.
401K should be government run at 1% per year. As it stands now if you make have $100 in a mature 401K the fund manager made $80. In the government run scenario you make $160 and the government makes $20. It would be so easy to fix the government income problem and place the tax where it belongs. I expect I will die without this ever happening.
-Airplane

like taking 20 years to recover the amount given to the banks free in the bailout.

a great time to do the same here in the US.

on edit: Sorry, nineteen50 I meant for this to be a reply to the OP, not to you.