My local MP is open to the idea of the Robin Hood tax. He also points out that the Lib Dems would tax banks’ profits. It wouldn’t make as much as a Tobin tax, but it would recoup some of the money handed over to the bankers.
My local MP is open to the idea of the Robin Hood tax. He also points out that the Lib Dems would tax banks’ profits. It wouldn’t make as much as a Tobin tax, but it would recoup some of the money handed over to the bankers.
Interestingly, the bank profit tax is a lot more economically justifiable than the bank bonus tax – any bank trading in the UK has an unfair advantage in the market, because people know that our Government won’t let a bank fail. Taxing profits on banks who trade in the UK not only returns money to the taxpayer, it compensates for this unfair advantage which requires the banks to use the money we’ve given them more wisely.
Vince Cable also talks about the need for the Government to use its stake in the banks to encourage them to lend to UK small businesses – a lot of perfectly viable small businesses are going to the wall because they can’t borrow small amounts to invest at low risk.
Incidentally, I like your comics links – a lot of great comics there!
Thanks. And check out my own comic, the first page went up today.
Reining in the excesses and making the banking system fairer can only be a good thing. If it can be done.
The idea of banks being “too big to fail” can’t be a good one. I wonder if there’s a way- next time one of them starts to implode- of forcing them to break up into manageable smaller businesses. Unlikely with another huge merger in the offing, but one can dream.