In 1978, James Tobin, a Nobel prizewinning American economist, proposed a very small tax on foreign exchange transactions to deter short-term currency speculation. Such speculation wreaks havoc on national budgets, economic planning and allocation of resources. Events including the Mexican peso crisis in 1994 and recent currency devaluations in Thailand and Southeast Asia have led to calls by governments and citizens for measures to curb currency speculation.

The Robin Hood Tax --- an idea whose time has come??

Walkom: Will Canada impose a Robin Hood tax on banks?
By Thomas Walkom
April 23, 2010
Canada was on the wrong side of climate change. We're on the wrong side of financial reform. If we don't watch out, this could become a habit.
Source:
Toronto Star

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Flaherty ratchets up fight against bank tax
By Sheldon Alberts and Paul Vieira
April 23, 2010
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on Thursday escalated a dispute with the International Monetary Fund over the organization's proposal for a global bank tax to guard against future financial meltdowns, calling the plan "odd" and saying it makes little sense for Canada. "We are a sovereign country. We can regulate our banks and our other financial institutions as we see fit," said Flaherty, who is in Washington for annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank.
Source:
Ottawa Citizen

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Statement Prepared for the International Monetary and Financial Committee
of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund:
The Honourable Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance for Canada,
on behalf of Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize,
Canada, Dominica, Grenada, Ireland, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis,
Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Washington, DC
April 24, 2010
"(...)Conclusion:
Through meaningful and thoughtful reform, the IMF will gain the legitimacy, credibility and effectiveness it needs. Legitimacy will arise when the Fund has voice and representation that reflects the economic realities of the 21st century, and when the Fund makes transparent decisions with clear accountability."
Source:
Department of Finance Canada

COMMENT:
So if I read the above excerpt from the statement's conclusion correctly, Mr. Flaherty and his friends from Ireland and some Caribbean countries feel:
(1) that the IMF is lacking in legitimacy, credibility and effectiveness,
(2) that the Fund's voice and representation don't reflect the economic realities of the 21st century, and
(3) that the Fund doesn't make transparent decisions with clear accountability.
Makes one wonder whether the kerfuffle is over the IMF's suggestion that the banking sector should be forced to pay for their own bailouts, or whether there's something deeper there. Something's definitely awry when the Harper government disses the fiscally-conservative International Monetary Fund...

International Monetary Fund (IMF)
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 186 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world.

_________________________________________________

NOTE: The IMF is not without its detractors.
See the "Criticism" section of
this Wikipedia article on the International Monetary Fund.
_________________________________________________

IMF - World Bank 2010 Spring Meetings
Washington D.C.
April 24-25, 2010
Each Spring, the IMF's International Monetary and Financial Committee and the joint World Bank-IMF Development Committee hold meetings to discuss progress on the work of the Fund and Bank. Plenary sessions of the IMF and the World Bank's Boards of Governors are only scheduled during the Annual Meetings in the autumn

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From Canadian Business Online:

Robin Hood tax would raise $700 million a year from bank transactions: activists
By Heather Scoffield, The Canadian Press
April 20, 2010
OTTAWA - The International Monetary Fund is recommending all G20 countries slap a tax on financial institutions - advice that puts the organization at odds with Canada, which has a rigid anti-tax position. In a report leaked to the BBC and posted on the network's website, the IMF says G20 governments should tax banks and other financial institutions to make them pay for their own bailouts.

Source:
Canadian Business Online

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From BBC News:

International Monetary Fund (IMF)
proposes two big new bank taxes to fund bail-outs
April 21, 2010
Banks and other financial institutions face paying two new taxes to fund future bail-outs, the BBC has learned.
(...) The IMF documents were made available to governments of the G20 group of nations on Tuesday afternoon and seen by the BBC soon afterwards. The plans will be discussed by finance ministers this weekend.

The "leaked" IMF document
on the BBC News website:

Meeting of G-20 Ministers
April 2010
A FAIR AND SUBSTANTIAL CONTRIBUTION BY THE FINANCIAL SECTOR
INTERIM REPORT FOR THE G-20 (PDF - 1.5MB, 57 pages)
Prepared by the Staff of the International Monetary Fund
April 16, 2010
This is an interim response to the request of the G-20 leaders for the IMF to: “...prepare a report for our next meeting [June 2010] with regard to the range of options countries have adopted or are considering as to how the financial sector could make a fair and substantial contribution toward paying for any burden associated with government interventions to repair the banking system.”

Source:
BBC News

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robinhoodtax.ca - new site launched April 20, 2010
Every so often, a proposal comes along that would transform everything. Every so often, activists and people in power end up on the same side of an issue. Every so often, the solution isn’t complicated … just brilliant. Every so often, we get the chance to be part of something huge. We have that chance right now, and it’s called The Robin Hood Tax. A tiny fee on the trade in financial transactions – paid by banks, not by people – it would raise billions of dollars for fighting poverty and climate change at home and around the world.

* How the Robin Hood Tax works

* Act Now

Note : The Robin Hood Tax is part of the At the Table campaign.

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At The Table - Make your voice heard at the G8 and G20 summits
At the Table is made up of international NGOs, poverty groups, climate change groups, students, faith groups, organized labour organizations and more than 60 Canadian groups working on G8 and G20 issues. At The Table supporters will gather around hundreds of tables – in restaurants, living rooms, church halls, town squares, classrooms and online meeting spaces – to tell world leaders they need to live up to their promises to meet the Millennium Development Goals and cut world poverty in half by 2015. Politicians from all levels of government will be invited to join these table discussions. Supporters will create a huge photo petition in cyberspace which will be presented to world leaders at the start of the Summits. [ Excerpt from Who We Are ]

* The Issues
--- Poverty and inequality --- Climate change --- The global economy

* Press releases

* Partner Organizations (30) - with graphic links to their websites

________________________________________________________________

Related link:

Financial Transactions aka “Robin Hood” tax campaign
By Toby Sanger
April 20, 2010
This morning Oxfam launched their “Robin Hood” (financial transactions) tax campaign in Canada with a press conference in Ottawa and the launch of their website. (...) Estimates are that an international financial transactions tax at a rate of 0.05% could raise up to $600 billion a year and the Robin Hood tax campaign proposes that a quarter of this goes to fund Millenium Development Goals and another quarter goes to support for international climate change programs. This campaign is leading up to the G20 meetings in Toronto this June and is part of an international campaign for an international financial transactions tax.

Source:
Blog : Relentlessly Progressive Economics
[ Progressive Economics Forum ]

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From Oxfam Canada:

The Robin Hood Tax
- two-minute video explaining the Robin Hood Tax : "... tiny fee on financial transactions – paid by banks, not by people..."

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The Robin Hood Tax [ United Kingdom ]
The Robin Hood Tax is a tiny tax on bankers that would raise billions to tackle poverty and climate change, at home and abroad. By taking an average of 0.05% from speculative banking transactions, hundreds of billions of pounds would be raised every year. That’s easily enough to stop cuts in crucial public services in the UK, and to help fight global poverty and climate change.
(...)
Who’s in?
Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel (the German Chancellor) and Nicolas Sarkozy (the French President) have all spoken out in support of a tax on financial transactions. Plenty of business bigwigs are on-board too. Like Lord Turner (from the Financial Services Authority), George Soros (the philanthropist) and Warren Buffet (US businessman extraordinaire). And then there are the hundreds of economists who have backed the idea, too. This isn’t some crazy pipedream. It’s a simple and brilliant idea which transcends party politics and which – with your support – can become a reality.

Isn’t this the Tobin Tax?
Posted February 11, 2010
The Robin Hood Tax differs fundamentally from James Tobin’s original concept as its principal motivation is the raising of revenue as opposed to being a way of regulating speculative financial activity.

James Tobin first proposed his tax in the 1970s as a way of ‘throwing sand in the wheels’ of currency markets rather than harnessing their extraordinary volumes as a means of generating income. More recently the idea of a wider Financial Transactions Tax covering the full range of products traded in the financial markets, has gained ground. Even levied at a very low rate, a yield of $400 billion a year could be realised.

The media as a means of shorthand refer to the Financial Transaction Tax as the Tobin Tax. In fact, Tobin made his proposal specifically about currency transactions. When he made his proposal 30 years ago, the foreign exchange market had a daily value of $18 billion. The market is now worth more than $3,000 billion per day. Tobin’s proposal was for a 1% levy, 200 times the rate the Robin Hood Tax campaign is proposing for the taxing of foreign exchange. The purpose of his tax was to impede daily currency trading and to discourage speculative activity, not as we propose to be a means of raising new revenue to fight poverty, at home and abroad.

The Robin Hood Tax differs markedly from the Tobin tax in that it is born of a different time, proposed at a different rate and designed for a different purpose.

Related links:

The Tobin Tax - from Wikipedia

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A Tiny Tax Could Do a World of Good
By Philippe Douste-Blazy
September 23, 2009
As leaders of the world’s largest economies gather today in Pittsburgh for the Group of 20 meeting, people in the world’s poorest countries will likely look on with a mix of hope and trepidation, wondering whether their needs will figure in the deliberations at all. The G-20 nations could help both the poor and the global economy by fully financing lagging efforts to fight poverty and disease worldwide, and the best way to do this would be to impose a very small tax on the prosperous foreign exchange industry.
Source:
New York Times
Author Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French foreign minister from 2005 to 2007, is the chairman of UNITAID and a special adviser to the United Nations secretary general on innovative financing.
UNITAID’s mission is to contribute to scaling up access to treatment for HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, primarily for people in low-income countries, by leveraging price reductions for quality diagnostics and medicines and accelerating the pace at which these are made available.

Related links:

Tobin-lite could raise £3 Billion for third world
By Ashley Seager
7 April 2005
A new campaign will be launched today to persuade the government to levy a stamp duty on foreign exchange trading that would raise billions of pounds for poverty relief in developing countries.
Source:
The Guardian

Stamp Out Poverty (U.K.)- Campaigning for new sources of development finance
We are committed to the implementation of additional sources of finance, specifically duties or levies, to generate reliable income streams for the provision of long term sustainable development; and to combat, where linked, causes of poverty such as economic and environmental harm to developing countries.

War on Want (U.K.)
War on Want fights poverty in developing countries in partnership with people affected by globalisation.
We campaign for human rights and against the root causes of global poverty, inequality and injustice.

United Nations Millennium Development Goals
* End Poverty and Hunger
* Universal Education
* Gender Equality
* Child Health
* Maternal Health
* Combat HIV/AIDS
* Environmental Sustainability
* Global Partnership
Source:
United Nations

Canada

The Tobin Tax
Source:
Halifax Inititative
The Halifax Initiative is a Canadian coalition of development, environment, faith-based, human rights and labour groups. Our goal is to fundamentally transform the international financial system and its institutions, namely the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and export credit agencies. By doing so, we hope to achieve poverty eradication, environmental sustainability and the full realization of human rights.

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Currency Transaction Tax (A Halifax Initiative sister site)
Money has become a commodity rather than a means of exchange, trading at a volume of over US$ 1.2 trillion dollars per day. This enormous amount moves around the world without restriction, seeking maximum short-term profit. When currency speculators “bet” against a currency and rapidly withdraw billions from a country, they wreck havoc on its economy and people’s lives. Leading economists, including the late James Tobin, Rodney Schmidt, Paul Bernd Spahn and others have proposed that the international trade in currencies be taxed in order to promote international economic stability and help prevent financial crises. A global citizen’s movement has emerged in support of the currency transactions tax, or “Tobin” tax as it is often called. The tax is a means to reassert national economic sovereignty, help prevent financial crises and generate billions of dollars for global social development and environmental protection.

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ATTAC-Québec (French only)
Association pour la Taxation des Transactions pour l'Aide aux Citoyens

United States

The Tobin Tax Initiative
A project of the International Innovative Revenue Project,
within the Center for Environmental Economic Development in California.

- incl. links to the following:
* What are Tobin Taxes?
* Tobin Tax Bibliography
* Publications and Resources
* Who We Are
* Campaigns Around the World
* US Campaigns

Tobin Tax Campaign and Policy Network
Links to groups promoting the Tobin Tax around the world, including Canada

GLOBAL POLICY FORUM
New York
"Global Policy Forum monitors policy making at the United Nations, promotes accountability of global decisions, educates and mobilizes for global citizen participation, and advocates on vital issues of international peace and justice."
* Social and Economic Policy
* Human Rights and Transnational Corporations

Financing for Development - Links and Resources

Currency Transaction Taxes
- incl. links to dozens of proposals, analyses and articles about currency transaction taxes,
from 2003 right back to the original Proposal for Monetary Reform by James Tobin in 1978.