Linda McQuaig: Tory chill freezes out Tobin tax

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty missed no photo-op last weekend as he hosted the G7 finance ministers in Iqaluit. Watching Flaherty climb onto dog sleds, crawl into igloos and wolf down seal meat, Canadians got little sense of something else he was up to: obstructing worldwide momentum for a tax on financial speculation.

The idea of curbing financial speculation by imposing a tax on financial transactions has been attracting support from reformers ever since it was proposed in the early 1970s by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin.

Tobin's idea was ingenious: impose a tax so small (as little as 0.05 per cent) that it would have no impact on serious investors making long-term investments, but would amount to a million pinpricks in the flesh of those engaging in high-volume, quick-turnover speculative activities -- like the ones that have turned financial markets into wildly gyrating, high-risk casinos.

So it's hard not to love the Tobin tax: it could raise billions of dollars globally a year by hitting financial speculators while leaving genuine investors unharmed -- like a miracle cancer drug that leaves the healthy surrounding tissue undamaged.

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http://rabble.ca/columnists/2010/02/tory-chill-freezes-out-tobin-tax

And neither will dumb arse King Stephen.