I have a novel idea to fund the proposed $700,000,000,000 bail-out... an idea which (unfortunately) harkens back to the Depression: Can you spare a dime? But the idea is, literally, to nickel and dime our financial markets back to solvency.
What if we instituted a temporary tax on shares bought and shares sold on American stock markets, bond markets, commodity markets, option markets, etc. I'm suggesting 10¢ a share. If you buy 100 shares of stock, there's a $1 tax on the transaction. If you sell 100 shares of stock, the same $1 tax. I'd collect the tax from both buyers and sellers.
Here's how lucrative this tax would be. About 18 billion shares were sold and then bought on American stock exchanges on Sept. 18th. That doesn't even include shares of bonds, options, or commodities. Taxing each seller a dime a share, and each buyer a dime a share, would have produced one-day revenues of $360 million for that one day alone.
To make the math simpler, let's round-down to $300 million per day in taxes collected. That creates $1.5 billion in revenue per week, or $75 billion per year. In ten years, we will have paid for the bail-out.
The beauty of this tax? We're taxing the very individuals who have profited from the unregulated markets -- active traders. The average investor will experience minimal impact. Who pays the bill? Investment bankers and speculators. I think there's justice in that.