[Occupymendocino] Letter to the Editor

[agnes at mcn.org]

FTT
 After he spent a day on Wall Street, the father of organized crime,
gangster Lucky Luciano said," I suddenly realized I had joined the wrong
Mob."

During the past 15 years or so, Wall Street bankers have pulled off an
unprecedented,  heist in broad daylight. They've stolen the bulk of our
country's investment money. According to Jim Hightower, "Those once
respectable Wall Street investment houses have been converted into global
casinos  that churn trillions of dollars into an everchanging assortment 
of indecipherable  gaming devices with exotic names like "Synthetic
Collateralized Debt Obligations". These are not investments. They are
nothing but  bets between the banks that invent the games and the very
wealthy gamers who play them... The chief players in this  casino are
called High Frequency Traders (HFT)... They are rapidly scanning huge
arrays of market prices, looking for an obscure stock value that they
think could change this week, tomorrow morning or even the next minute.
Then they buy a mass of this stock or commodity, and if the price changes,
they instantly sell it -and cash in. It's all done with supercomputers,
controlled by super intelligence using algorithms to search millions of
prices at super speeds  and place the bets automatically.  Transaction
times are measured in miliseconds."
Hightower  says this is a global network of "trading robots" that never
sleep and whose sole function is to allow the wealthiest  speculators to
skim profits out of our markets. It empowers them to manipulate everything
from stock prices to oil prices." They pay no US taxes on this gambling, 
but seven countries in the EU have passed financial transaction taxes .

A financial transaction tax (FTT) is proposed calling for a  0.5 %
assessment on stock transactions.That's 50 cents on a $100. stock
transaction.This would net $300-$350 Billion a year. Half the country's
stock is owned by the 1 percenters and only a few  of  them are in the HFT
game. The  FTT is an uncomplicated way for us to get our money back. It's
the computerized churners of speculation who will pony up  the bulk of
revenue,and  not the "buy and hold"  ordinary folk investors. It's called
the "Robin Hood Tax".The National Nurses United and the Occupy Wall Street
movement  want to rally public suppoert, and push Congress to
act.www.RobinHoodTax.org.