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Activist group Bankster USA has launched a petition to get Congress to pass a financial transaction tax. Nearly 1600 people have signed the action alert so far:
Tell Congress there's a sensible tax on Wall Street that would help solve our budget problems.
When reckless trading on Wall Street crashed the global economy, American taxpayers bailed out the big banks to the tune of $4.7 trillion. That is trillion with a “T”.
Today, Wall Street is booming. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo executives are earning just as much as they did before the financial crisis. In 2010, the CEOs of these three banks made $52 million dollars combined.
Yet on Main Street family incomes are tanking, job creation has stalled, and 42 million people are living in poverty, more than at any other time in the last 50 years.
We have done our part, now it’s time for Wall Street to do more – through a tiny sales tax on each Wall Street trade called a financial transaction tax.
Right now Congress is considering huge cuts to Medicare and Social Security as well as other important programs in health, education and housing.
Enough is enough! We know where the money is. A tiny tax on financial services can generate billions of dollars.
Join the Americans for Financial Reform, the AFL-CIO, SEIU, Demos, Public Citizen, Jobs with Justice, the National Nurses United, National People's Action and the other groups saying:
It’s time for Wall Street to start Paying US Back!
The tax would raise large sums of money -- projections include more than $100 billion annually -- and at the same time would discourage speculation and would make Wall Street investors pay more of their fair share for the problems they caused and the massive sums of taxpayer money they have used.
Proposals for an FTT rate are modest -- for instance 0.25 percent on a stock purchase or sale and 0.02 percent on the sale or purchase of a future, option, or credit default swap. These rates are proportional to the actual transaction costs in the industry.
Opponents will certainly say this will have a negative effect on jobs and the economy, but the proposals are small enough that this is unlikely and it's more likely that the increased government revenue will be more of a benefit to the U.S. than any potential negatives.
