Reform of IMF

[Chris Burford]

At 01:10 PM 8/20/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>Treasuries and Central Banks fear that even talking about a Tobin tax is
>>instant death for their international finance industries--that all
>>transactions will move to Bermuda or the Caymans if they even start
>>discussions...
>>
>>Yet another example of the race to the bottom produced by divided
>>sovereignty and jurisdiction...
>
>They say that, but is it really true? If the G-10 central banks wanted to
>enforce a Tobin tax, couldn't they? An IMF report on the 1992 ERM melodrama
>said that the Swiss national bank refuses to let its banks lend francs for
>shorting - that shows a pretty strong level of control for something
>putatively out of the authorities' hands. My guess is that the central
>banks don't want a Tobin tax, because they're totally in the grip of their
>financiers, not because it's beyond their technical capacity.
>
>Doug

The remedy for this would be to get some conferences going at which
financial "experts" would look silly if they could not discuss this
proposition intelligently.

BTW if the US government really wants global peace and stability, it might
do better to look at the economic system than to thrash around spending
billions on raids against terrorists, which will provide the conditions for
even greater dangers.  

Chris