The "Tobin Tax" has been kicked around a lot lately as one possible option. France and Germany were recently promoting the idea and now, the UK has come on board. It's easy to understand that not everyone will always agree on policies such as this though it's becoming hard to see when Geithner and Obama will ever ask the financial businesses to contribute their fair share. If not this, what? When? Under what circumstance? The never-ending free ride for Wall Street becomes less and less acceptable as time moves on. The administration continues to be either too timid to fight or they actually believe the Wall Street centric view of the world.
Gordon Brown suffered a rebuff from Washington yesterday after he signalled Britain's backing for plans for an international transactions tax on banks to help the world recover from the financial crisis.
At the G20 summit in St Andrews, Fife, the Prime Minister dropped Britain's longstanding opposition to the scheme, which could raise billions a year for poor nations.
But within hours of the significant shift in UK policy on the so-called "Tobin tax", the US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner dismissed the move, saying Washington was "not prepared" to support it.
