Tax Wall Street Speculators

[expat_panama]

I vote for raising taxes on all government employees. We can call it "the useless parasite tax."

Hmm, I'm imagining a Marine corporal I know (serving in the middle east) getting a hefty tax hike for his troubles. Maybe not. There's always the clerk cutting a death benefits check for the family of the slain border patrolmen...

Perhaps saying 'all government employees' is kind of like saying 'all black people'.

 

[Mr Liberty]

...remember the days when one had to use a live broker trading shares in manual paper? It was quite expensive.

So what was so bad about those days. I mean, other than double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, the Soviet missile threat, and disco.

How about the days when AIG et. al. speculated in derivatives and tore up $trillions in losses that they couldn't cover. How about the oil spike a few years ago, that did no good for anyone? Just some kids playing with derivatives.

IMHO if they don't do anything that helps create jobs, tax the piss out of them.

Have you tried investing? I been investing for 15 years. My annuities are invested in the market. So are 401ks. I am a middle class carpenter, been out of work since February. Profits from the market is the only income I am receiving right now.
It is a casino; However if you pay attention to the economy you will have an edge. I am 100% in silver. The Fed has spent way too much money.

 

[Flopper]

So what was so bad about those days. I mean, other than double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, the Soviet missile threat, and disco.

How about the days when AIG et. al. speculated in derivatives and tore up $trillions in losses that they couldn't cover. How about the oil spike a few years ago, that did no good for anyone? Just some kids playing with derivatives.

IMHO if they don't do anything that helps create jobs, tax the piss out of them.

Have you tried investing? I been investing for 15 years. My annuities are invested in the market. So are 401ks. I am a middle class carpenter, been out of work since February. Profits from the market is the only income I am receiving right now.
It is a casino; However if you pay attention to the economy you will have an edge. I am 100% in silver. The Fed has spent way too much money.

I've owned gold and silver off and on for about 40 years making about as much as I have lost. The one thing I can say about precious metal investing is don't your welcome. What goes up comes down.

 

[Mr Liberty]

How about the days when AIG et. al. speculated in derivatives and tore up $trillions in losses that they couldn't cover. How about the oil spike a few years ago, that did no good for anyone? Just some kids playing with derivatives.

IMHO if they don't do anything that helps create jobs, tax the piss out of them.

Have you tried investing? I been investing for 15 years. My annuities are invested in the market. So are 401ks. I am a middle class carpenter, been out of work since February. Profits from the market is the only income I am receiving right now.
It is a casino; However if you pay attention to the economy you will have an edge. I am 100% in silver. The Fed has spent way too much money.

I've owned gold and silver off and on for about 40 years making about as much as I have lost. The one thing I can say about precious metal investing is don't your welcome. What goes up comes down.

Have you looked at the money supply. I have heard others saying it's a bubble, but no, it is setting to the natural value our currency. the dollar spot index is dropping daily. Silver one year ago was around 17.00 now it is 46.68. $100.00 silver is a no brainer.
The point I was trying to make is the market is available to even the poor. You can open a brokerage account for only $25.00. Add to it every pay period, anyone can create wealth. Taxing it will cause a market crash and prohibit the small investor from creating wealth.

 

[editec]

Certainly a modest sales tax on stock, bond, commodities contracts and derivative investments would generate some serious revenues.

Certainly you have no data to back that up or else you would have already presented it.

The daily average trading on New York Stock Exchange is $153 BILLION a day, Multiply that number by even a fraction of a point and your're generating some real money

The billions of commodities contracts traded in the various exchanges also likely to generation a vairly large amount even if a fraction of point is charged on the sale

In 2004, the exchange traded 805.3 million contracts with a value of $463.4 trillion.

In 2005, average daily volume at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (nyse: CME - news - people ) soared 34% from a record 2004, and the number of contracts traded for the year surpassed 1 billion.

Sooooo...you were kvetching about what exactly, again ?

That's where MOST of the economic activitiy is in this nation, nowadays, anyway.

No data for that either.

Ya know, Lad, if I wrote that the sun comes up in the east, I probably wouldn't provide data for that either.

I plead guilty to assuming that my readers are not ENTIRELY ignorant about these subjects that we discuss fairly often.

In your case, I guess my faith in your general level of knowledge on this subject was misplaced.

I apologise for giving you the benefit of the doubt.

 

[Cuyo]

Government creates financial meltdowns. Government created the entire market for sub-prime mortgages. AIG was the tool government used to pass off this garbage to suckers.

That's absolutely ridiculous.

The truth is ridiculous?

Nooooooo... How dumb you are is ridiculous.

 

[expat_panama]

...Maybe you can come up with some sampling of firms delisting because of the US tax structure.

Easy enough to do by searching key words 'publicly traded corp delisting "united states"' but the problem is how reports like those tend to provide more heat than light.

The bottom line is US exchanges are still world leaders and disadvantages to corps for disclosure roughly equals advantages to investors. All my accounts are with US exchanges, I've considered moving but no other environment ever could compare.

 

[expat_panama]

...Profits from the market is the only income I am receiving right now.
It is a casino; However....

It's a casino in the sense that the investor has to measure and manage risk. People who do that don't gamble in casinos, they own the casinos. Come to think of it, I've done quite well with stocks in the 'gaming' sector...

 

[Flopper]

Have you tried investing? I been investing for 15 years. My annuities are invested in the market. So are 401ks. I am a middle class carpenter, been out of work since February. Profits from the market is the only income I am receiving right now.
It is a casino; However if you pay attention to the economy you will have an edge. I am 100% in silver. The Fed has spent way too much money.

I've owned gold and silver off and on for about 40 years making about as much as I have lost. The one thing I can say about precious metal investing is don't your welcome. What goes up comes down.

Have you looked at the money supply. I have heard others saying it's a bubble, but no, it is setting to the natural value our currency. the dollar spot index is dropping daily. Silver one year ago was around 17.00 now it is 46.68. $100.00 silver is a no brainer.
The point I was trying to make is the market is available to even the poor. You can open a brokerage account for only $25.00. Add to it every pay period, anyone can create wealth. Taxing it will cause a market crash and prohibit the small investor from creating wealth.

You seem to be suggesting that the poor should invest in precious metals. Gold and silver is simply a hedge like shorts and should not be the core holdings of any investment portfolio. To do so is not investing but speculating, something the poor can ill afford.

Silver may well reach a hundred dollars an once but it will go down. The demand for silver as well as gold springs from the belief that bad economic times lay ahead which again may be true. However, to take the position that precious metals will continue to rise in price indefinitely is to go against the long term trend of economic growth. Many have done that in past; taking the position that economic growth is at an end and the country will not pull out of the current crisis. Those that have followed that course have been wrong for 230 years.

If you believe what we are seeing will be just a speed bump in the our history, then you better be prepared to move out of precious metals once they top out, assuming you can actually forecast the top which few people can do.