It’s actually called a “Tobin Tax“, and the idea is that a tax of about 5 basis points (0.05%) on non-consumer bank transactions (otherwise known as “speculation”).

As was noted with the original Tobin proposal, this is actually very hard to evade, because they sales have to be settled something, and for any transaction of any significant size, this means only a few places, New York, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo, etc. settle (i.e.) pay.

If you moved from highly trafficked settling institutions to obscure ones, the costs of settling become much higher, and in fact will likely likely be much higher than 5 basis points.

There is an organization in the UK, the Robin Hood Tax campaign, which is lobbying for the idea, and produced the above video, which illustrates how it would work, and how it would benefit everyone except for the vampire squids^* of the world.

In an interesting twist to all of this, the folks at the campaign put up an online poll, and some online entities spammed the poll to oppose the proposal.

I wonder who might have done this?

The Robin Hood Tax campaign alleged that a Goldman computer was one of two computers that allegedly “spammed” the internet poll with more than 4,600 “no” votes in less than 20 minutes on Thursday.

Technical staff for the Robinhoodtax.org.uk website said the “no” counter increased at a “dramatic rate” from 3.41pm.

The number of “no” votes jumped from 1,400 to 6,000 before campaigners – who are calling for the introduction of 0.05pc tax on banking transactions – tightened the site’s security.

Robin Hood’s security team claimed it traced the erroneous votes to two computers, one of which is allegedly registered as belonging to Goldman.

Goldman is saying that it has, “just received this information and is investigating fully,” which in the UK means busting which ever staff member is of Indian or Pakistani extraction, I guess.

In any case, the “Yes” vote is winning by about 9:1, 41488 to 4626.

I approve of their program, though I think that 5 basis points is too low. It should be at least 25 basis points (¼%).

^*Goldman Sachs and their Evil Minions^™