The Secret Plan to Pass a Global Tax
Posted Under: Uncategorized
WedNEWSday - December 16th, 2009
With President Barack Obama attacking “fat cat bankers on Wall Street,” left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) see a great opportunity to pass a global tax on financial transactions that could generate at least $700 billion a year from the U.S. and other “rich” countries. They are expecting Obama’s support.
The banks are a key target because of the “anger” that already exists against them for their roles in the global financial crisis, says a detailed 13-page memorandum from Max Lawson of the foreign aid group Oxfam.
Calling the global Financial Transactions Tax (FTT) “an idea whose time has come,” Lawson says in his memorandum that “politically the time is now” to pass such a tax. “It will take some great campaigning but I think we can do this,” he says in a message introducing the memo.
Lawson explains, “The global anger against the bankers; the huge pressure on rich country budgets; the need for money in 2010 to rescue the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] and from failure; to protect poor countries from the economic crisis; and the need to come up with money for climate change to unlock a global deal. All combine to make a very strong political backdrop.”
The MDGs were established by the United Nations to make sure that the U.S. and other Western nations devote 0.7 percent of Gross National Product to official development assistance or foreign aid. As a Senator, Obama had introduced a bill, the Global Poverty Act, to mandate U.S. compliance with the MDGs at an estimated cost of $845 billion.
Lawson, head of development and finance for Oxfam in Britain, has distributed his 13-page memorandum to members of NGOs in the U.S. and other countries. “There is potentially plenty of money here for all of our issues,” he tells them.
The global tax is being called “the Robin Hood tax,” in order to convince people that it is somehow designed to take money away from rich people in order to help the poor. Another variation on this theme is the claim that the tax is aimed at Wall Street to help Main Street.
In reality, such a tax would affect IRAs, Mutual Funds and pensions by taxing the exchange of financial transactions. It would hand over great sums of money to politicians in the name of bashing the big banks but ordinary Americans and their life savings would be hurt.
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As outlined by Lawson, however, the idea is to create the appearance of public support for the plan, ultimately enabling G8 leaders meeting in Canada in June to agree to the global tax and then get acceptance from the G20 leaders meeting afterward.
At the same time, the U.S. Congress is moving ahead with the “Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act of 2009″ (HR 4191), a financial transactions tax introduced by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), a leading member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Lawson’s document cites support for the tax from Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who endorsed the DeFazio measure during a December 7 news conference and, according to a CNS News report, announced that the bill would have to be made “global” to keep U.S. investors from taking their business overseas and out of taxable reach.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is introducing a similar bill, which has the backing of the AFL-CIO, in the Senate.
An “Open Letter from Economists in Support of Financial Transaction Taxes” has been released and signed by 200 liberal and left-wing economists.
Lawson also cites support for the tax from billionaires George Soros and Warren Buffet and such media organizations and figures as Le Monde, The Mail, The Guardian and Paul Krugman of the New York Times.
President Obama “supported [the idea] during his campaign,” Lawson says, but the U.S. Treasury Department under Timothy Geithner has been resisting it.
However, Politico reported on December 3 that Pelosi is now pressuring Geithner to accept the global tax proposal. “Geithner was widely seen as opposing such a levy when it was proposed by Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, at a meeting of G-20 finance ministers last month in Scotland,” the publication reported. But after a telephone conversation, “Pelosi told colleagues that the secretary indicated he was more open to some such fee than had been reported,” it added…
by Cliff Kincaid
Read more at Accuracy in Media - December 14th, 2009
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