>Market failure in financial markets I understand. How to improve them
>seems to me to be much harder (although there do seem to me to be a
>bunch of things worth trying)...
>
>Thus I tend toward liking [snip] substantial tax penalties for all
>short-term financial investments...
Fidel Castro engaged in the same activity a couple of weeks ago:
>It is of crucial importance for the Third World to work for the
>removal of that sinister institution [i.e. the IMF], and the philosophy it
>>sustains, to replace it with an international finance regulating body
>that
>would operate on democratic bases and where no one has a veto right.
>An institution that would not defend only the wealthy creditors and
>impose interfering conditions, but would allow the regulation of
>financial markets to arrest unrestrained speculation.
>
>A viable way to do this would be by establishing not a 0.1% tax on
>speculative financial transactions as Mr.Tobin brilliantly proposed,
>but rather a minimum 1% which would permit the creation of a large
>indispensable fund -- in the excess of one trillion dollars every
>year-- to promote a real, sustainable and comprehensible development
>in the Third World.
Well, let's do it then...
john mage