Check out this chart. It tells the story of a rigged manipulated market. Buying stocks as an individual investor is foolish. The Wall Street shysters and their high frequency trading supercomputers control the market. Isn’t it curious how high frequency trading didn’t even exist until 2007. Since the economic collapse of 2008 high frequency trading has come to dominate the markets. The Wall Street elite and their co-conspirators at the Treasury Dept and the Federal Reserve are in constant contact. They use their supercomputers to drive the market in any direction they choose. They use their supercomputers to keep a lid on the gold and silver market. They know that soaring prices for gold and silver would reveal how bad our economic situation really is. HFT adds no economic benefit to the country or small investors. It allows the Wall Street scum to syphon off nickels from every trade, resulting in billions of profits for these parasitic leeches on society.
This is why I fully support Tom Harkin’s proposed HFT tax on these psychotic manipulative slimeballs. Tax the living shit out of the Wall Street banksters. This is a tax that will have zero impact on the average person. Since Wall Street calls the shots in DC, the chances of this HFT tax passing is NEGATIVE 50%.
Stay as far away from the stock market as you can. You are the dupe.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Sen. Tom Harkin wants lawmakers to consider his financial transaction tax bill as they work on ways to resolve their differences on spending and taxes and the impending “fiscal cliff.”
The Iowa Democrat talked with MarketWatch on Thursday about a bill he’s introduced that would put a 3-cent tax on every $100 of stock, bond or derivatives transactions, a measure he believes would slow down high-speed traders who he insists don’t add to the economy and have led to “some disturbances.”
Harkin said the tax won’t hurt “real trading” or the economy and also bring billions of dollars in critical revenue to Washington at a time that it is really needed.
The 73-year-old senator also discussed his own campaign plans and his assertion that cuts to Medicare shouldn’t be on the table as part of any agreement to resolve the so-called “fiscal cliff,” where about $500 billion in spending cuts and tax increases are set to begin in January unless the White House and Congress reach an alternate deal.
Here’s what the senator said.
MarketWatch: It doesn’t sound like you believe high speed traders are a positive contributor to the economy. They represent a huge part of the volume of trades in any given day. What impact do you believe the tax will have on them?
Harkin: I really don’t see any evidence that these high-speed traders add anything to the economy, but they do also create some aberrations in the market that have led to some disturbances. On the one hand, my transaction tax doesn’t put them out of business but certainly they would have to pay 3 cents on every $100 in transactions they do. That’s really not very burdensome. But also we need revenue. We have to get out of this deficit hole we’re in and this transaction tax is estimated to raise about $352 billion over ten years. That’s pretty substantial. And I don’t think it will do anything at all to hurt trading, what I call “real trading.”
Q: Critics of the tax say it will make it more expensive for retail investors and pension funds who represent a lot of retail investors to buy or sell securities in the marketplace. As a result, they say, it will raise the cost of trading, reduce returns to investors and make it more difficult for firms to raise capital, hurting jobs. Do you disagree?
A: I disagree. There is no real evidence that high-speed traders have been really helpful to the economy. There are some countries in the world today, both Singapore and Switzerland, that have a transaction tax and it hasn’t hurt their trading. Several nations in the European Union are now moving in that direction for implementing a transaction tax. But I can understand that they don’t’ want to be taxed. Who wants to pay taxes? High speed traders are not really helping the economy that much and this is one way to slow them down a little bit. I see nothing wrong with that.
Q: Similar bills in recent years have made no progress in Congress, with worry about how failure to reach a global agreement on a tax would drive business off-shore. Do you think there is impetus now for one?
A: I think a couple of things are pushing this to enactment. It is a small tax. Some other countries already have a transaction tax and European Union has been talking about this and look like they are moving in that direction. Finally, the budget hole we’re in is driving this. This is one source of revenue that I don’t think will adversely affect the economy but will help us get out of this fiscal cliff situation.
Q: Do you think this could be part of discussions that could be part of a fiscal cliff resolution and do you disagree with critics who say it will drive business overseas?
A: Yes, I do think it could be part of the fiscal cliff discussions. And I’m not afraid of the notion that business will go overseas. The rate is very low, and I don’t think our traders would move overseas and leave our system, our regulatory infrastructure, our court system, all the things that protect investors in this country. They won’t give all that up for 3 cents on a hundred dollars.
Q: Are you getting traction on Capitol Hill on this?
A: I hope so. I think there has been a lot of misinformation about it in the past. The finance committee will take this up.
Thinker says:
There have been a slew of consumer surveys targeting small-level investors in 401Ks, mutual funds, ETFs, etc. lately. That, more than anything else, tells me that financial services companies are trying to gauge small-investor sentiment prior to making some kind of major policy/rule change. Some of the questions they’ve asked make me think they’re going to switch everything over to government investment instruments and are trying to figure out if investors will go along with it or not.
Scary times.
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30th November 2012 at 1:53 pm
daddysteve says:
Whether this legislation has merit or not , don’t think for a second that Harkin isn’t a “bought and paid for” political whore. If he’s introducing this then you can be sure he believes it won’t pass. Kind of like the “audit the Fed” pipedream. However , he is good at positioning himself for the next election.
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30th November 2012 at 2:48 pm
Eddie says:
The HFT tax will never, ever happen, imho, although it’s be a damn fine idea.
Although the metals are still getting smashed by HFT on a regular basis, they are not staying down the way they did a year ago. It no longer looks to me like capitulation…it looks like there is aggressive buying when levels drop below support.
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30th November 2012 at 3:56 pm