Why a Robin Hood tax on filthy rich City types is the very LAST thing needed

Couldn't hit water falling out of a fecking boat

And the prize to missing the point goes to:

"Central to the Robin Hood folks' logic is that there's such a thing as too much financial speculation."

Wrong. The central point of a transaction tax isn't to discourage investment. The central point is to vastly expand the tax base so large that the tax burden can exclusively rest on those who choose to undertake financial transactions. Whether the tax will have a deterring effect on investment is debatable, but irrelevant. No amount of discussions about tax policies or economics can ignore the overwhelming mathmatical support for moving to a transaction tax model exclusively. Note the work at http://www.thetransactiontax.org and http://www.apttax.com

Algorithmic trading voids this entire article

I love the kind of article where someone makes claims that completely ignore reality. Algorithmic trading now accounts for 50-80% of all market trading, and the algorithms aren't acting on new market data, but solely speculating on movements generated largely by others of their kind.

The noble fluff about efficient markets and speculation as the information lifeblood of market movements is just that - noble-sounding fluff. It bears no relation to real markets - and I'm sure we're all surprised by that.

... there wasn't (and still isn't, not easily) any method of [shorting] housing

First, you need to be clear: "still isn't, not easily" means that there was a way/ways. So what was it?

2nd, I do believe recall some trader doing just this and retiring on it.

3rd, (and this is all according to my understanding of shorting) to short housing you need to have someone who goes long on it. IOW, an other party who disagrees with you and is prepared to stand by their belief. Since there was the near-universal belief that housing would bubble on forever, there must have been plenty of 'long' believers who wouldn't mind making a packet by taking on a bear in a bet. Therefore I can't accept your claim that it's difficult to short.

Other than that, fine article, probably.

yep

Like most things, it's obvious given thought.

Lots of individual decisions work better than cooperation of any kind that involves more than a handful of people.

Robin Hood Nonsense

The tax discussed here has been rejected by every country beyond a few little European nations bullied into something they now regret. Highly reputable academics, international treasurers, policy analysts and decision makers repeatedly slammed this tax as toxic, ideologically driven and unviable. Its targets were ordinary working people, farmers, small businesses, pensioners and small investors. But just as worrisome was its exponential economically damaging potential. Think Sweden - the country that experimented and couldn't get rid of it fast enough.

The Asian region was the destination for transaction tax overtures by distant, last century Europe's Mr Barroso, whose bad judgment included wasting EU taxpayers' money touring the world attempting to force his unworkable, nonsensical idea on those who long ago formally expressed 100% rejection of it. Mr Barroso was politely advised by our government officials in this burgeoning and competitive Asian region to go back to Europe and look after his own business.

The GFC was caused by the irresponsible issuance of mortgage loans to irresponsible borrowers. This began during the Clinton era; Clinton believing that everyone was entitled to take on debt, regardless of their ability to repay. The so-called Robin Hood Tax (pushed by dangerously under-informed charities with glistening eyes on an impossible share of a highly improbable pie) was a non-starter then and always will be. James Tobin ultimately revised and rejected his own idea before he died.

I can't reconcile these 2 statments.

With respect to this Nobel:

Quote: "The award of a Nobel is as close as we get to an affirmation that this is the scientific consensus."

With this statement:

Quote: "The Nobel Prize in Economics isn't quite a Nobel as it's awarded by the Swedish Central Bank"

How is an award from A, one, singular, central bank of A, one, singular, coutry, a scientific concensus?

Right facts wrong conclusion

While it is true that more ways to speculate might bring the price of a commodity closer to the 'real' price, this assumes that we want the commodity close to the real price. Any engineer should know that if you remove all damping from a system it reacts very fast to change, but that still means we want damping in a system. The tax does not prevent any type of speculation. You can still go long and even sell naked short. You just have to pay for it. This is the equivalent of a damping force on a mechanical response. Remove the shock absorbers from your car and your tires will follow sudden dips and bumps much more closely. They will follow the 'real' road. The ride quality for the man in the cab will suffer.