A windswept beach. A university town. And a few hundred protesters dressed as finance ministers symbolically burying their heads sand.
It’s a lot harder to protest against the G7 rich man’s club, now that it’s the G20.
The agenda is somewhat more murky when it is China refusing to discuss climate finance, rather than the UK or the US.
So you could pass such protests off as an irrelevance.
As it happens, within the real meeting, one of the main aims of these campaigners – the Tobin tax – was getting the biggest boost it has ever received.
The idea that global currencies trades, capital flows and other trades could be subject to a small percentage tax has been a longstanding pipedream for development campaigners. It has two purposes.
To throw sand in the wheels of speculative activities (the description of Nobel prize-winning US economist James Tobin in 1978), dampening down its worst excesses.
And also to raise around half a trillion dollars for something: global poverty, climate change, debt relief, AIDS, malaria: take your pick.
Gordon Brown’s espousal of it, among four long term responses to the credit crunch, was a shock.
It is a proposal that has long interested economists.
Lord Turner was slapped down after musing about it in the summer in an interview with Prospect.
But there was a reference to the policy at the Pittsburgh G20 leaders conference. And let’s not forget that these days with it being the G20 and not the G7, the likes of Brazil are already around the top table with policies such as a 2 per cent tax on capital flows.
Eight years ago I chanced upon an unlikely source of support for a tax on speculative activities: George Soros.
‘I’m in favour of the Tobin tax. It doesn’t happen to coincide with my personal interest, but it could be a very good source of funds for providing global [public] goods,’ he told me in 2001 when I was Economics Correspondent at The Observer.
The main critique has been that it was impractical, and impossible to enforce if not agreed by the whole world.
Well, that appears to be the Prime minister’s agenda.
Though it’s worth knowing that a previous French proposal to study a Tobin tax to fund the Millennium Development Goals was vetoed at a G7 meeting, while Gordon Brown was chancellor.
Of course this is a highly political move.
George Osborne has outflanked the government on being tough on bonuses. He is desperate not to be seen as friendlier to bankers that Mr Darling and the Prime minister.
In an election Labour will be keen to paint him as an banker- loving Tory.
So he will tread carefully around this policy issue. Of course the banking lobby is against it. But the international community is not as against some form of this idea as you might think.
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How dare the American be critical of “our Gordon”. It may be a daft and unworkable idea (like most of his ideas) but he is “our Gordon” and as such the US should pay him greater respect. After all it was Labour who helped them invade Iraq – and they should remember that and be grateful as “our Tony” may well end up in a war crimes trial thanks to his support for “their Bush”.
A bit of respect for him (though I appreciate t can be difficult most of the time).
Don’t leaders thrive on tax.It raises money for their pet projects.It gives much more scope for corruption .Can you imagine a world wide tax.How much fiddling of that.We have Parliamentry corruption,European parliament corruption.So many corrupt regimes around the world.
All the bureaucrats can think of is raising money and spending more than they have.It is time Parliament and world leaders started living within their means as normal families have to do or should
Bail-out and then tax-so circular and so pointless- ho hum !
Because the UK has levied a tax on financial transactions for centuries, we’re able to observe its effects. Share deals and house sales both pay stamp duty. LSE share turnovers are noticeably lower compared with overall stock values that either NYSE or NASDAQ, and is marginally less volatile. Which suggests that taxes reduce numbers of frothy transactions. Moreover, the HIP reports are, arguably, simply an extra tax on offering a house for sale. There too, we’ve seen a steep drop in numbers offered for sale – though probably mostly due to financial circumstances.
It’s simply to soon to call whether that extra Tobin Tax on UK property has reduced frothy speculation.
No wonder GB knew his proposal would never pass the Wall St test!
Maybe GB was just shrewdly trying to please the french government at this delicate moment?
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