User:Cyan/kidnapped/Tobin Tax

The Tobin Tax is an advocated measure to reduce the tendency of financial capital to flow instantly out of areas suffering adversity and into safe haven investments abroad at exactly the moment funds are required where they are. It would place a small tax on the currency future markets, well under 1%, which would effectively eliminate all potential for large scale arbitrage in these markets. It is this potential which has, since the 1980s, required all banks of global reach to maintain huge computer and software and talent bases strictly and only for the purposes of performing huge capital flows to exploit tiny margins of potential arbitrage.

Such pointless technological escalation has prompted some to criticize this system as so-called casino capitalism - gambling disguised as investment. There are, tellingly, no advocates of the existing system, it simply evolved as a response to a lack of international law on capital flow. There are no known economic arguments in favour of retaining a system where capital flows so quickly that it literally must move in anticipation of facts about events - and many arguments against this kind of reactive finance. Behavioural finance in particular suggests that early movements of capital may prompt later ones by mere market momentum, ignoring all fundamentals.

Some countries, notably Canada, have passed laws advocating the Tax only as simultaneous policy, i.e. not to come into effect until all countries that have jurisdiction agree.

Elements of the anti-globalization movement often demand implementation of the Tobin Tax. It was named for its creator, the economist James Tobin.