Ignacio Ramonet

Ignacio Ramonet (Redondela, Pontevedra, 5 de mayo de 1943) es un periodista español establecido en Francia. Es una de las figuras principales del movimiento antiglobalización.1

Contenido

[ocultar]

1 Biografía 2 Obra 3 Véase también 4 Referencias 5 Enlaces externos

[editar] Biografía

Nacido en 1943, Ramonet creció en Tánger donde sus padres, republicanos españoles que huían de Franco, se instalaron en 1948. Estudió en la Universidad de Burdeos y regresó a Marruecos. En 1972 se trasladó a París, donde se inició como periodista y crítico cinematográfico.

Es doctor en Semiología e Historia de la Cultura por la École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) de París y catedrático de Teoría de la Comunicación en la Universidad Denis-Diderot (París-VII).

Especialista en geopolítica y estrategia internacional y consultor de la ONU, actualmente imparte clases en la Sorbona de París. Desde 1990 hasta 20082 fue director de la publicación mensual Le Monde Diplomatique y la bimensual Manière de voir.

Es cofundador de la organización no gubernamental Media Watch Global (Observatorio Internacional de los Medios de Comunicación) de la que es presidente.

Un editorial escrito en Le Monde Diplomatique durante 1997 dio lugar a la creación de ATTAC, cuya labor se dedicó originalmente a la defensa de la tasa Tobin. En la actualidad se dedica a la defensa de una gran variedad de causas de la izquierda política y tiene como presidente de honor a Ignacio Ramonet. Fue también uno de los promotores del Foro Social Mundial de Porto Alegre.

Es Doctor Honoris Causa de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, en España, y de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, en Argentina.

[editar] Obra

Ha sido galardonado en numerosas ocasiones y es autor de varios libros, la mayoría traducidos a diversas lenguas, entre los que destacan:

La Golosina visual, (1985 y 2000) Cómo nos venden la moto, (con Noam Chomsky; 1995) Il Pensiero Unico (con Fabio Giovannini y Giovanna Ricoveri; 1996) Nouveaux pouvoirs, nouveaux maîtres du monde (1996) Télévision et pouvoirs (1996) Un Mundo sin rumbo (1997) Internet, el mundo que viene (1998) Rebeldes, dioses y excluidos (con Mariano Aguirre; 1998) La tiranía de la comunicación (1999) Geopolitica i comunicació de final de mil-lenni (2000) Marcos, la dignidad rebelde (2001) Propagandas silenciosas o Guerras del Siglo XXI (2002) La Post-Television(2002) Abécédaire partiel et partial de la mondialisation, (con Ramón Chao y Wozniak;

2003) Irak, historia de un desastre (2004) ¿Qué es la globalización? 2004 (con Jean Ziegler, Joseph Stiglitz, Ha-Joon Chang,

René Passet y Serge Halimi) Fidel Castro: biografía a dos voces o Cien horas con Fidel (2006) La catástrofe perfecta (Le Krach Parfait) (2009)

[editar] Véase también

Attac

[editar] Referencias

1. ↑ Ramonet, Ignacio (2009). La catástrofe perfecta (2010 (Diario público) edición). por acuerdo con: Icaria editorial S.A y Éditions Galilée. pp. 228. B-20114-2010.

2. ↑ Mensaje de París | Le Monde diplomatique, edición peruana

[editar] Enlaces externos

Wikiquote alberga frases célebres de o sobre Ignacio Ramonet. El Quinto Poder por Ignacio Ramonet Página web de Le Monde Diplomatique Transcripción de una conferencia en español de Ignacio Ramonet sobre la relación

del poder y los medios de comunicación El latifundio de la información es una excelente metáfora. Publicado el   : 2 Junio

2009 - 12:27 de la tarde . Radio Nederland por Ignacio Ramonet

Categorías: Nacidos en 1943 | Redondelanos | Periodistas de la provincia de Pontevedra | Sociólogos de España | Geopolítica | Críticos de la globalización | Escritores antiglobalización

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Ignacio RamonetFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ignacio Ramonet, Salon du livre, Geneva (2011).

Ignacio Ramonet (born May 5, 1943, Redondela, Pontevedra Province) is a Spanish journalist and writer.

He was the editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique from 1991 until March 2008.[1]

An editorial published by Ramonet on December 1997 in this magazine resulted in the launching of ATTAC. In addition, Ramonet is one of the founders of the NGO Media Watch Global, and currently he is president of this organization. Ramonet also frequently contributes to El País and participates in an advisory council to Telesur.

Contents

[hide]

1 Life 2 Ideology

o 2.1 Socialism 2.1.1 Fidel Castro

o 2.2 Against globalization and liberalism 3 Attac

o 3.1 James Tobin against Attac 4 Works 5 Articles 6 See also 7 External links and references

[edit] Life

Ramonet grew up in Tangier. He studied engineering at Bordeaux, Rabat and Paris, and he has been professor at Université Paris-VII.

Ignacio Ramonet participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007.

[edit] Ideology

[edit] Socialism

Ramonet calls it a betrayal of socialism that some social democrat parties have chosen the third way between socialism and capitalism. [2]

[edit] Fidel Castro

The NGO Reporters without Borders had written about Ramonet's strong relationship with Fidel Castro. Ramonet denied this claim in 2002 [3] . In May 2004, Ramonet supported Castro in a direct television interview when Castro protested about the Forbes Magazine's list of country leaders wealth. Castro was number 7 on the list[4]. Syyskuussa 2006 Ramonet julkaisi kirjan Fidel Castro : Biografía a Dos Voces.[5]

In 2006, Ramonet praised "comrade Castro" in a series of articles,[6] and became his only authorised biographer.[7]

[edit] Against globalization and liberalism

Ramonet has called for autarky and for regulation, taxes and tariffs that reduce international trade. [2]

[edit] Attac

According to Ramonet, globalization and ultra-liberalism threaten the sovereignty of national states. In his December 1997 editorial "Disarming the markets" Ramonet accused globalization for the Asian economic crisis and for threatening the identity of national states. To counter this, he called for an NGO for promoting Tobin tax (i.e., Attac). [2]

[edit] James Tobin against Attac

Ramonet founded Attac to promote Tobin Tax by the Keynesian economist James Tobin. Tobin himself has accused Attac for misusing his name and said that he is a supporter of free trade, as do most other economists too, and of International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization — "everything that these movements are attacking. They're misusing my name." Tobin also says that he has nothing in common with Attac. [8]

[edit] Works

1981 : Le Chewing-gum des yeux (French: Chewing Gum for the Eyes) 1989  : La Communication victime des marchands 1995 : Cómo nos venden la moto, with Noam Chomsky 1996 : Nouveaux pouvoirs, nouveaux maîtres du monde (French: New Powers, New

World Masters) 1997  : Géopolitique du chaos (French: Geopolitics of Chaos) 1998 : Internet, el mundo que llega (Spanish: Internet, the Coming World) 1998  : Rebeldes, dioses y excluidos (Spanish: Rebels, Gods, and the Excluded), with

Mariano Aguirre 1999 : La Tyrannie de la communication (French: The Tyranny of Communication) 1999  : Geopolítica y comunicación de final de milenio (Spanish: Geopolitics and

Communication at the End of the Millennium) 2000 : La golosina visual 2000  : Propagandes silencieuses 2001 : Marcos, la dignité rebelle 2002  : La Post-Télévision 2002 : Guerres du XXIe siècle (Wars of the 21st Century) 2004  : Abécédaire partiel et partial de la mondialisation, with Ramón Chao and

Wozniak 2006: Fidel Castro: biografía a dos voces (Spanish: Fidel Castro: Biography with

Two Voices) also titled Cien horas con Fidel (One Hundred Hours with Fidel)

[edit] Articles

Set The Media Free by Ignacio Ramonet (2003)

[edit] See also

ATTAC Financial transaction tax Tobin tax

[edit] External links and references

1. ̂ To our readers2. ^ a b c Vilka är franska Attac? - Globaliseringskritikernas gurus, Johan Norberg,

Liberal Debatt 1-20013. ̂ [1], Le Monde Diplomatique, April 20024. ̂ http://www.lexpress.fr/info/quotidien/actu.asp?id=37945. ̂ ISBN 0-307-37653-26. ̂ Ignacio Ramonet: "Cuba's Future is Now", "Castro's Enviable Record" and "Viva

Fidel!" in Was Fidel Good for Cuba?, Foreign Policy, December 27, 2006 (pdf)7. ̂ Cuba’s revolution 50 years on, Financial Times, January 24 2009

8. ̂ "They Are Misusing My Name", an interview with James Tobin, Der Spiegel, September 2, 2001

Stock Exchange Of Visions: Visions of Ignacio Ramonet (Video Interviews)

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Ignacio RamonetAller à : Navigation, rechercher

Ignacio Ramonet au salon du livre de Genève en 2011.

Ignacio Ramonet, né le 5 mai 1943 à Redondela (Galice, Espagne), est un sémiologue du cinéma et un journaliste, ancien directeur du mensuel Le Monde diplomatique. Il est actuellement directeur de l'édition espagnole du Monde diplomatique1 et président de l'Association Mémoire des luttes 2 . Il est également éditorialiste de politique internationale à l'agence Kyodo News (Tokyo), à l'agence Inter Press Service (IPS)3, à Radio Nederland, (Amsterdam), au quotidien Elefterotypia (Athènes) et au journal d'information numérique Hintergründe, Allemagne.

Sommaire

[masquer]

1 Biographie 2 Le fondateur d'ATTAC 3 Relations avec Fidel Castro 4 Récompenses 5 Ouvrages 6 Notes et références 7 Liens externes

Biographie[modifier]

Ignacio Ramonet a grandi à Tanger (Maroc) où ses parents, républicains espagnols fuyant le franquisme, se sont installés vers 1948. Après avoir obtenu une Maîtrise ès Lettres en France à l'Université Bordeaux III, il enseigne au Collège du Plateau (Salé, Maroc), puis au collège du Palais royal de Rabat où il a comme élève le futur roi Mohammed VI. Il

s'installe définitivement en France en 1972. Influencé par Roland Barthes et dirigé par Christian Metz, il soutient en 1981 à l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales un doctorat sur le rôle social du cinéma cubain. De 1975 à 2005, il enseigne la théorie de la communication au département de Cinéma, Communication, Information (CCI) de l' Université Paris-VII.

Critique de cinéma, il collabore aux Cahiers du Cinéma puis à Libération qui vient alors d'être créé par Serge July et Jean-Paul Sartre. Entré au mensuel Le Monde diplomatique en février 1973, il en est élu directeur de la rédaction et président du directoire en janvier 1990 ; réélu à l'unanimité à deux reprises (1996 et 2002), il demeurera directeur du Monde diplomatique jusqu'à mars 2008 4 ,5.

Il est également docteur honoris causa de l'université de Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle et de l'Université de Córdoba (Argentine), et auteur de plusieurs livres de géopolitique et de critique des médias.

Le fondateur d'ATTAC[modifier]

Ignacio Ramonet a été le premier à définir le concept de Pensée unique dans un article de janvier 19956.

Il a été à l'origine de la création de l'association ATTAC dont il est Président d'honneur. En effet, dans un éditorial du Monde diplomatique de décembre 1997 intitulé Désarmer les marchés, il constate que la Mondialisation financière s'est créé son propre État, avec ses appareils, ses réseaux d'influence et ses moyens d'actions, mais que c'est un État complètement dégagé de toute société, qu'elle désorganise les économies nationales, méprise les principes démocratiques qui les fonde, presse les États à s'endetter, exige des entreprises qu'elles leur reverse des dividendes de plus en plus élevés, et fait régner partout l'insécurité. Il propose donc d'établir une taxe sur toutes les transactions financière, la taxe Tobin 7 et, pour y contribuer, il suggère de mettre en place une organisation non gouvernementale, l'« Association pour une taxe Tobin d'aide aux citoyens (ATTAC)».

Il a été également parmi les promoteurs du Forum social mondial de Porto Alegre, dont il a proposé le slogan : Un autre monde est possible. Pour ce qui concerne la société médiatique, il est le fondateur de l'ONG internationale Media Watch Global (Observatoire international des médias) et de sa version française, l'Observatoire français des médias. Il est aussi membre du comité de parrainage de la Coordination française pour la Décennie de la culture de paix et de non-violence.

Relations avec Fidel Castro[modifier]

Une controverse, alimentée notamment par Reporters sans frontières, existe quant à sa proximité avec Fidel Castro; informations qu’il a démenties8. En mai 2004, Ignacio Ramonet apporte son soutien à Fidel Castro en direct à la télévision alors que ce dernier proteste contre le classement que Forbes vient de publier : celui des fortunes des chefs d'État, où Fidel Castro apparaît en 7e position9. Il a publié en septembre 2006 : Fidel

Castro : Biografía a dos voces10. Ce livre, traduit en une vingtaine de langues, est une suite d'entretiens entre Ignacio Ramonet et Fidel Castro.

Récompenses[modifier]

Il a reçu plusieurs distinctions internationales :

le Prix Liber'Press au « meilleur journaliste de l'année », Girona (Espagne), 1999 le Prix Colombe d'Or au « meilleur journaliste étranger défenseur de la paix »,

Rome (Italie), 2000 le Prix au « meilleur journaliste défenseur des droits de l'homme », La Corogne

(Espagne), 2001 le Prix Rodolfo-Walsh de journalisme « pour sa trajectoire professionnelle »,

Université de La Plata (Argentine), 2003 le Prix de la Communication culturelle Nord-Sud, Rabat (Maroc), 2003 le Prix Turia de l'information, Valence (Espagne), 2004 le Prix Méditerranée de l'information, Naples (Italie), 2005 le Prix José Couso de la liberté de la presse, Ferrol (Espagne), 2006. le Prix international de la Liberté de Presse attribué par le journal algérien Al

Khabar, Alger, 2007. le Prix Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins "pour son constant apport à une meilleure

compréhension des relations sociales, politiques, économiques et culturelles des sociétés contemporaines", Santiago du Chili, 2009.

le Prix Antonio-Asensio de journalisme "pour sa lutte constante en faveur d'un monde plus juste et plus libre", Barcelone, 2010

Ouvrages[modifier]

Le Chewing-Gum des yeux, Alain Moreau éditeur, Paris, 1980 ; nouvelle édition modifiée et augmentée, sous le titre Propagandes silencieuses, 2000, cf. infra.

La communication victime des marchands, La Découverte, 1989. Como nos venden la moto, avec Noam Chomsky, Icaria, Barcelone, 1995. Nouveaux pouvoirs, nouveaux maîtres du monde, Fides, Montréal, 1996. Géopolitique du chaos, Galilée, 1997 ; réédition en « Folio », Gallimard, Paris,

1999. La tyrannie de la communication, Galilée, 1999, Folio, Gallimard, 2002. (Extraits) Propagandes silencieuses. Masses, télévision, cinéma, Galilée, 2000 ; réédition en

« Folio », Gallimard, 2003 Marcos, la dignité rebelle. Entretiens avec le sous-commandant Marcos, Galilée,

2001. Guerres du XXI e   siècle - Peurs et menaces nouvelles, Galilée, 2002. Abécédaire partiel et partial de la mondialisation, avec Ramon Chao et Jacek

Woźniak, Plon, 2004. Irak : Histoire d'un désastre, Galilée, 2005. Fidel Castro, biographie à deux voix, Fayard, Paris, 2007. Guide du Paris rebelle, avec Ramon Chao, Plon, Paris, 2008.

Le Krach Parfait, Galilée, 2009. La Crisis del Siglo, Icaria, Barcelone, 2009. L'Explosion du journalisme. Des médias de masse à la masse de médias, Éditions

Galilée, Paris, 2011

Notes et références[modifier]

1. ↑ Adresse: calle Aparisi i Guijarro, n°5, 2; 46003 Valencia (Espagne) http://www.monde-diplomatique.es [archive]

2. ↑ http://www.medelu.org [archive]

3. ↑ http://ipsnoticias.net/ [archive]

4. ↑ «   La succession d’Ignacio Ramonet   »  [archive], Les Amis du Monde diplomatique, février 20085. ↑ «   À nos lecteurs   »  [archive], Le Monde diplomatique, février 20086. ↑ http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/1995/01/RAMONET/1144 [archive]

7. ↑ Ignacio Ramonet, «   Désarmer les marchés   »  [archive], Le Monde Diplomatique, décembre 19978. ↑ «   Anticastrisme primaire   »  [archive], Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde diplomatique, avril 20029. ↑ «   Cuba   : Infortuné Fidel   »  [archive], Pauline Lecuit, L'Express, 16 mai 200610. ↑ Fidel Castro : Biografía a dos voces, Ignacio Ramonet, 2006, Debate, Madrid, 656 p., ISBN 978-

0-307-37653-4

Liens externes[modifier]

Articles

«   Viva Brasil   !   » , Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde diplomatique, janvier 2003 «   Le cinquième pouvoir   » , Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde diplomatique, octobre 2003

Entretiens audio

Avec Daniel Mermet (émission Là-bas si j'y suis) autour de son livre le Krach parfait (17 février 2009)

Avec Daniel Mermet (émission Là-bas si j'y suis) autour de son livre le Krach parfait (18 février 2009)

Avec Daniel Mermet (émission Là-bas si j'y suis, sur France Inter ) autour de son livre L'Explosion du journalisme (1er mars 2011)

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Ferran Montesa, empresario, ha suscrito una alianza con una gran empresa de informática, situando la suya propia en una dimensión idónea para competir en los tiempos que corren. Este refuerzo le permitirá dedicar parte de su talento y capacidad a ejercer de director general de la edición española de Le Monde Diplomatique. ¿Quién podía sospechar que en su corazón latía un editor en busca de un destino? Que los dioses sean benevolentes con su temeridad. Alfons Cervera, escritor y periodista, acaba de publicar otro libro. Diario de la Frontera, como se titula, recoge casi un centenar de artículos publicados en el periódico Levante, paridos todos ellos con la calidez y riqueza literaria que identifican al autor. Un amplio fresco de personajes y hechos pintados por un buen novelista doblado de agudo gacetillero, o al rev

Tasa TobinLa tasa Tobin o ITF (Impuesto a las transacciones financieras)1 es una propuesta de impuesto sobre el flujo de capitales en el mundo sugerido a iniciativa del economista estadounidense James Tobin en el año 1971, quien recibió el Premio Nobel de Economía en 1981, cuya instauración a nivel internacional ha sido propuesta e impulsada por el movimiento ATTAC,2 y por personalidades como Ignacio Ramonet, cuya implantación está siendo considerada con motivo de la crisis económica de 2008-2010.3 4 El propio Tobin ha considerado que se ha abusado de su nombre y su idea.5 En 2011 se ha vuelto a demandar la creación de un impuesto a las transaciones financieras, tanto desde autores políticas y monetarias -Unión Europea- como desde ONG como Oxfam.6 7

Los movimientos por una globalización alternativa opinan que los ingresos que este impuesto produciría podrían ser una importante fuente de financiación para combatir la pobreza en el mundo, pero otros, en especial los liberales de la escuela austriaca lo consideran una medida intervencionista especialmente perniciosa al obstaculizar el libre comercio, perjudicando según ellos a los países más pobres y presentando enormes dificultades de recaudación, gestión y utilización de los fondos.8

Contenido

[ocultar]

1 Historia 2 La Tasa 3 Críticas 4 Véase también 5 Referencias 6 Enlaces externos

[editar] Historia

El 15 de agosto de 1971, por orden del presidente Richard M. Nixon, el dólar estadounidense dejó de ser convertible en lingotes de oro incluso para gobiernos y bancos centrales extranjeros. Fue el fin del sistema de Bretton Woods, y el golpe de gracia al patrón oro. Con la adopción de un sistema de tipos de cambio flotantes y el fin de los controles sobre los movimientos de capitales, Tobin sugirió un nuevo sistema para la estabilidad monetaria mundial y propuso que tal sistema debería incluir una tasa que gravara las transacciones comerciales internacionales.

La idea durmió en un cajón durante más de 20 años, rechazada por el propio Tobin, que decía haber sido malinterpretado. Sin embargo, en 1997, Ignacio Ramonet, editor de Le Monde Diplomatique, reimpulsó el debate sobre la creación de la Tasa Tobin y creó una asociación para promoverla: ATTAC (Asociación por la Tasación de las Transacciones y por la Ayuda a los Ciudadanos). La tasa se ha convertido en un asunto defendido por los grupos altermundistas y ha conseguido invadir el debate político en la calle y en algunos parlamentos, llegando a ser incluso defendida parcialmente por el ex presidente francés Jacques Chirac.9 Por otra parte, el recientemente creado Banco del Sur, iniciativa del presidente Hugo Chávez de Venezuela y el ex presidente Néstor Kirchner, contempla, para mantener su autonomía con respecto a los organismos financieros internacionales (Banco Mundial, FMI, BID, CAF, entre otros) su capitalización con ingresos provenientes de una tasa Tobin introducida a escala regional.10

[editar] La Tasa

La Tasa Tobin consiste en pagar un impuesto cada vez que se produce una operación de cambio entre divisas, para frenar el paso de una moneda a otra y para, en palabras de Tobin, "echar arena en los engranajes demasiado bien engrasados" de los mercados monetarios y financieros internacionales. La tasa debía ser baja, en torno al 0,1%, para penalizar solamente las operaciones puramente especulativas de ida y vuelta a muy corto plazo entre monedas, y no a las inversiones.

La Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre Comercio y Desarrollo (UNCTAD) concluyó que la tasa Tobin permitiría recaudar 720.000 millones de dólares anuales, distribuibles a partes iguales entre los gobiernos recaudadores y los países más pobres. Por su parte, el PNUD afirma que con el 10% de la suma recaudada sería posible proporcionar atención

sanitaria a todos los habitantes del planeta, suprimir las formas graves de malnutrición y proporcionar agua potable a todo el mundo, y que con un 3%, se conseguiría reducir a la mitad la tasa de analfabetismo presente en la población adulta, universalizando asimismo la enseñanza primaria.

Aunque la tasa Tobin está orientada a la amplitud de transacciones comerciales internacionales, si consideramos reducir el espectro de su aplicación, desde la amplitud del comercio, de la economía real, al campo exclusivo de las transacciones financieras de carácter especulativo, se crearía una importante diferencia. Hay quien opina que la tasa Tobin devendría así en un instrumento de control de la actividad especulativa -basada en instrumentos financieros complejos, de alto riesgo y alta volatilidad. La crisis económica de 2008-2010, provocada por las inversiones de alto riesgo a largo plazo, financiadas con deuda a corto plazo, muestran que la tasa Tobin podría convertirse en un instrumento estabilizador que podría evitar crisis económicas.11 12

[editar] Críticas

Los liberales, entre otros, rechazan la idea porque afirman que perjudica especialmente a los países pobres. Esgrimen los siguientes motivos:

1. Estos movimientos ya están gravados en numerosos países. Imponer una tasa adicional supone aceptar que los gobiernos son incapaces de controlar la evasión fiscal con impuestos, por lo que una nueva tasa no es más que otra confiscación arbitraria. Además, en palabras de Samir Amin: Controlar la especulación es querer curar los síntomas sin ocuparse de las causas de la enfermedad...

2. Una hipótesis es que la pobreza nunca podrá resolverse con transferencias, porque la pobreza no es un problema de distribución sino de falta de producción. No está nada claro que los obstáculos financieros de la tasa Tobin, al final no fueran a resultar perjudiciales para los pobres. Por lo pronto, la inyección de las cantidades de capital de las que se habla provocaría una inflación catastrófica.

3. Existen numerosos problemas técnicos para recaudar este impuesto, así como para gestionar y repartir su producto, actividades que requerirían una enorme (y presumiblemente ineficiente) maquinaria burocrática.

4. El mercado de transacciones en divisas produce utilidades enormes a las instituciones financieras e individuos que participan en el mismo. La Tasa Tobin ataca estos movimientos de capital, obstaculizando el libre comercio y provocando un mayor aislamiento, algo que no necesitan precisamente los países pobres del mundo.

5. Muchos países del Tercer Mundo tienen ligadas sus débiles monedas al dólar, de manera que si un ciudadano de estos países vendiera sus productos, por ejemplo, a la Unión Europea tendría que cambiar, primero, los euros a dólares (pagando una vez la Tasa Tobin) y, luego, los dólares a la moneda local (pagando así dos veces la Tasa Tobin).

[editar] Véase también

Impuesto negativo sobre la renta Renta básica Ley Glass-Steagall de 1933 Fondos de alto riesgo o Hedge funds

[editar] Referencias

1. ↑ Conoce el ITF2. ↑ Resucita la Tasa Tobin, 29/8/20093. ↑ Brown cree que la 'tasa Tobin' será una realidad, Público -España-, 12/2/20104. ↑ Una hoja de ruta para la tasa Tobin, Jesús Lizcano Álvarez, El País - España-,

14/2/20105. ↑ El movimiento antiglobalización abusa de mi nombre, entrevista a James Tobin

para Der Spiegel, 3 de septiembre de 2001.6. ↑ Susana Ruíz, Oxfam, Vuelve la 'tasa Tobin', en versión 2.0, 21/201/2010 - El País7. ↑ ¿Ya demás de la tasa Tobin 2.0?, José Antonio García Saez, 1 de julio de 2011 -

Attac8. ↑ Pobreza a todo gas9. ↑ Los líderes mundiales buscan en Davos soluciones al subdesarrollo10. ↑ El Banco del Sur11. ↑ Brown cree que la 'tasa Tobin' será una realidad, Público -España-, 12/2/201012. ↑ Una hoja de ruta para la tasa Tobin, Jesús Lizcano Álvarez, El País - España-,

14/2/2010

[editar] Enlaces externos

Resucita la Tasa Tobin, 29/8/2009 ¿Qué es la tasa Tobin? , por Fabienne Dourson.

Categorías: Impuestos | Finanzas internacionales | Antiglobalización

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Tobin tax

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaFor the more general category of "financial transaction taxes", see Financial transaction tax. For the more general category of "currency transaction taxes", see Currency transaction tax.

A Tobin tax, suggested by Nobel Laureate economist James Tobin, was originally defined as a tax on all spot conversions of one currency into another. The tax is intended to put a penalty on short-term financial round-trip excursions into another currency.

Tobin suggested his currency transaction tax in 1972 in his Janeway Lectures at Princeton, shortly after the Bretton Woods system of monetary management ended in 1971.[1] Prior to 1971, one of the chief features of the Bretton Woods system was an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value—plus or minus one percent—in terms of gold. Then, on August 15, 1971, United States President Richard Nixon announced that the United States dollar would no longer be convertible to gold, effectively ending the system. This action created the situation whereby the U.S. dollar became the sole backing of currencies and a reserve currency for the member states of the Bretton Woods system, leading the system to collapse in the face of increasing financial strain in that same year. In that context, Tobin suggested a new system for international currency stability, and proposed that such a system include an international charge on foreign-exchange transactions.

In 2001, in another context, just after "the nineties' crises in Mexico, Southeast Asia and Russia,"[2] which included the 1994 economic crisis in Mexico, the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, and the 1998 Russian financial crisis, Tobin summarized his idea:

The tax on foreign exchange transactions was devised to cushion exchange rate fluctuations. The idea is very simple: at each exchange of a currency into another a small tax would be levied - let's say, 0.5% of the volume of the transaction. This dissuades speculators as many investors invest their money in foreign exchange on a very short-term basis. If this money is suddenly withdrawn, countries have to drastically increase interest rates for their currency to still be attractive. But high interest is often disastrous for a national economy, as the nineties' crises in Mexico, Southeast Asia and Russia have proven. My tax would return some margin of manoeuvre to issuing banks in small countries and would be a measure of opposition to the dictate of the financial markets.[3][4][5][6][7]

Though James Tobin suggested the rate as "let's say 0.5%", in that interview setting, others have tried to be more precise in their search for the optimum rate.

Contents

[hide]

1 Concepts and definitionso 1.1 Tobin's concepto 1.2 Variations on Tobin tax idea

1.2.1 The Spahn tax

1.2.2 Special Drawing Rightso 1.3 Scope of the Tobin concept

2 Evaluating the Tobin tax as a Currency Transaction Tax (CTT)o 2.1 Are different players in the economy operating at cross purposes to each

other?o 2.2 Stability, volatility and speculation

2.2.1 The appeal of stability to many players in the world economy 2.2.2 Effect on volatility

2.2.2.1 Theoretical models 2.2.2.2 Empirical studies

2.2.3 Historical attempts to reduce speculation via fixed exchange rates

o 2.3 Is there an optimum Tobin tax rate?o 2.4 Is the tax easy to avoid?

2.4.1 Technical feasibility 2.4.2 How many nations are needed to make it feasible?

3 Evaluating the Tobin tax as a general Financial Transaction Tax (FTT)o 3.1 Sweden's experience in implementing Tobin taxes in the form of general

financial transaction taxes 3.1.1 Tobin tax proponents reaction to the Swedish experience

o 3.2 Who would gain and who would lose if the Tobin tax (FTT) were implemented?

3.2.1 Views of ABAC (APEC Business Advisory Council) expressed in open letter to IMF

3.2.2 Views of the ITUC/APLN (Asia-Pacific Labour Network) expressed in their statement to the 2010 APEC Economic Leaders Meeting

3.2.3 Would 'regular investors like you and me' lose? 3.2.3.1 Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street

Bill 3.2.4 Would there be net job losses if a FTT tax was introduced?

o 3.3 Is there an optimum tax rate?o 3.4 Political opinion

3.4.1 Tobin tax proponents response to empirical evidence on volatility

3.4.2 Should speculators be encouraged, penalized or dissuaded?o 3.5 Questions of volatility

4 Comparing Currency Transaction Taxes (CTT) and Financial Transaction Taxes (FTT)

o 4.1 Research evidenceo 4.2 Practical considerations

5 Original idea and alter-globalization movement 6 Tobin tax proposals and implementations around the world

o 6.1 Sweden's experience with financial transaction taxes 6.1.1 Tobin tax proponents reaction to the Swedish experience

o 6.2 United Kingdom experience with stock transaction tax (Stamp Duty)

o 6.3 Sterling Stamp Duty - a currency transactions tax proposed for pound sterling

o 6.4 Multinational proposals 6.4.1 European idea for a 'first Euro tax' 6.4.2 Support in some G20 nations 6.4.3 The feasibility of gradual implementation of the FTT, beginning

with a few EU nations 6.4.3.1 Two simultaneous taxes considered in the European

Union 6.4.4 Latin America - Bank of the South 6.4.5 UN Global Tax

7 Support and opposition 8 See also 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External links

Concepts and definitions

Tobin's concept

James Tobin's purpose in developing his idea of a currency transaction tax was to find a way to manage exchange-rate volatility. In his view, "currency exchanges transmit disturbances originating in international financial markets. National economies and national governments are not capable of adjusting to massive movements of funds across the foreign exchanges, without real hardship and without significant sacrifice of the objectives of national economic policy with respect to employment, output, and inflation.”[1]

Tobin saw two solutions to this issue. The first was to move “toward a common currency, common monetary and fiscal policy, and economic integration.”[1] The second was to move “toward greater financial segmentation between nations or currency areas, permitting their central banks and governments greater autonomy in policies tailored to their specific economic institutions and objectives.”[1] Tobin’s preferred solution was the former one but he did not see this as politically viable so he advocated for the latter approach: “I therefore regretfully recommend the second, and my proposal is to throw some sand in the wheels of our excessively efficient international money markets.”[1]

Tobin’s method of “throwing sand in the wheels” was to suggest a tax on all spot conversions of one currency into another, proportional to the size of the transaction. He said:

It would be an internationally agreed uniform tax, administered by each government over its own jurisdiction. Britain, for example, would be responsible for taxing all inter-currency transactions in Eurocurrency banks and brokers located in London, even when sterling was not involved. The tax proceeds could appropriately be paid into the IMF or World Bank.

The tax would apply to all purchases of financial instruments denominated in another currency---from currency and coin to equity securities. It would have to apply, I think, to all payments in one currency for goods, services, and real assets sold by a resident of another currency area. I don't intend to add even a small barrier to trade. But I see offhand no other way to prevent financial transactions disguised as trade.[1]

In the development of his idea, Tobin was influenced by the earlier work of John Maynard Keynes on general financial transaction taxes:

I am a disciple of Keynes, and he, in his famous chapter XII of the General Theory on Employment Interest and Money, had already prescribed a tax on transactions, with the aim of linking investors to their actions in a lasting fashion. In 1971 I transferred this idea to exchange markets.[3][4]

Keynes' concept stems from 1936 when he proposed that a transaction tax should be levied on dealings on Wall Street, where he argued that excessive speculation by uninformed financial traders increased volatility. For Keynes (who was himself a speculator) the key issue was the proportion of 'speculators' in the market, and his concern that, if left unchecked, these types of players would become too dominant.[8] Keynes writes:

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the situation is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. (,[8] p. 104)

The introduction of a substantial government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available, with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation over enterprise in the United States. (,[8] p. 105)

Variations on Tobin tax idea

The Spahn tax

Main article: Spahn tax

According to Paul Bernd Spahn in 1995, "Analysis has shown that the Tobin tax as originally proposed is not viable and should be laid aside for good." Furthermore, he said:

"...it is virtually impossible to distinguish between normal liquidity trading and speculative "noise" trading. If the tax is generally applied at high rates, it will severely impair financial operations and create international liquidity problems, especially if derivatives are taxed as well. A lower tax rate would reduce the negative impact on financial markets, but not mitigate speculation where expectations of an exchange rate change exceed the tax margin."[9]

Spahn suggested an alternative involving

"...a two-tier rate structure consisting of a low-rate financial transactions tax, plus an exchange surcharge at prohibitive rates as a piggyback. The latter would be dormant in times of normal financial activities, and be activated only in the case of speculative attacks. The mechanism allowing the identification of abnormal trading in world financial markets would make reference to a "crawling peg" with an appropriate exchange rate band. The exchange rate would move freely within this band without transactions being taxed. Only transactions effected at exchange rates outside the permissible range would become subject to tax. This would automatically induce stabilizing behavior on the part of market participants."[9]

Special Drawing Rights

On September 19, 2001, retired speculator George Soros put forward a proposal, Special Drawing Rights or SDRs that the rich countries would pledge for the purpose of providing international assistance, without necessarily dismissing the Tobin tax idea. He stated, "I think there is a case for a Tobin tax ... (but) it is not at all clear to me that a Tobin tax would reduce volatility in the currency markets. It is true that it may discourage currency speculation but it would also reduce the liquidity of the marketplace." [10]

Scope of the Tobin concept

The term "Tobin tax" has sometimes been used interchangeably with a specific currency transaction tax (CTT) in the manner of Tobin's original idea, and other times it has been used interchangeably with the various different ideas of a more general financial transaction tax (FTT). In both cases, the various ideas proposed have included both national and multinational concepts.

A 2001 example of its association with the specific currency transaction tax is shown here:

"The concept of a Tobin tax has experienced a resurgence in the discussion on reforming the international financial system. In addition to many legislative initiatives in favour of the Tobin tax in national parliaments, possible ways to introduce a Tobin-style currency transaction tax (CTT) are being scrutinised by the United Nations."[11]

A 2009 example of its association with a general financial transaction tax is shown here:

"European Union leaders urged the International Monetary Fund on Friday to consider a global tax on financial transactions in spite of opposition from the US and doubts at the IMF itself. In a communiqué issued after a two-day summit, the EU’s 27 national leaders stopped short of making a formal appeal for the introduction of a so-called “Tobin tax” but made clear they regarded it as a potentially useful revenue-raising instrument."[12]

Evaluating the Tobin tax as a Currency Transaction Tax (CTT)

See also: Currency transaction tax

See also Evaluating the Tobin tax as a general Financial Transaction Tax

Are different players in the economy operating at cross purposes to each other?

In 1994, Canadian economist Rodney Schmidt noted that

in two-thirds of all the outright forward and [currency] swap transactions, the money moved into another currency for fewer than seven days. In only 1 per cent did the money stay for as long as one year. While the volatile exchange rates caused by all this rapid movement posed problems for national economies, it was the bread and butter of those playing the currency markets. Without constant fluctuations in the currency markets, Schmidt noted, there was little opportunity for profit.[13]

This certainly seemed to suggest the interests of currency traders and the interests of ordinary citizens [in national economies] were operating at cross-purposes.[13]

Schmidt also noted another interesting aspect of the foreign- exchange market: The dominant players were the private banks, which had huge pools of capital and access to information about currency values. Since much of the market involved moving large sums of money (typically in the tens of millions of dollars) for very short periods of time (often less than a day), banks were perfectly positioned to participate. Among swap transactions, which represented a major chunk of the foreign exchange market, 86 per cent of the transactions were actually between banks.[13]

Stability, volatility and speculation

The appeal of stability to many players in the world economy

In 1972, Tobin examined the global monetary system that remained after the Bretton Woods monetary system was abandoned. This examination was subsequently revisited by other analysts, such as Ellen Frank, who, in 2002 wrote: "If by globalization we mean the determined efforts of international businesses to build markets and production networks that are truly global in scope, then the current monetary system is in many ways an endless headache whose costs are rapidly outstripping its benefits."[14] She continues with a view on how that monetary system stability is appealing to many players in the world economy, but is being undermined by volatility and fluctuation in exchange rates: "Money scrambles around the globe in quest of the banker’s holy grail – sound money of stable value – while undermining every attempt by cash-strapped governments to provide the very stability the wealthy crave."[14]

Frank then corroborates Tobin's comments on the problems this instability can create (e.g. high interest rates) for developing countries such as Mexico (1994), countries in South East Asia (1997), and Russia (1998).[2] She writes, "Governments of developing countries try to

peg their currencies, only to have the peg undone by capital flight. They offer to dollarize or euroize, only to find themselves so short of dollars that they are forced to cut off growth. They raise interest rates to extraordinary levels to protect investors against currency losses, only to topple their economies and the source of investor profits. ... IMF bailouts provide a brief respite for international investors but they are, even from the perspective of the wealthy, a short-term solution at best ... they leave countries with more debt and fewer options."[14]

Effect on volatility

One of the main economic hypotheses raised in favor of financial transaction taxes is that such taxes reduce return volatility, leading to an increase of long-term investor utility or more predictable levels of exchange rates. The impact of such a tax on volatility is of particular concern because the main justification given for this tax by Tobin was to improve the autonomy of macroeconomic policy by curbing international currency speculation and its destabilizing effect on national exchange rates.[1] Economist Korkut Erturk states:

if the Tobin Tax is not stabilizing, then much of the rest of the discussion on its feasibility and other related issues are probably moot.[15]

Theoretical models

Most studies of the likely impact of the Tobin tax on financial markets volatility have been theoretical—researches conducted laboratory simulations or constructed economic models. Some of these theoretical studies have concluded that a transaction tax could reduce volatility by crowding out speculators[16] or eliminating individual 'noise traders'[17] but that it 'would not have any impact on volatility in case of sufficiently deep global markets such as those in major currency pairs,[15] unlike in case of less liquid markets, such as those in stocks and (especially) options, where volatility would probably increase with reduced volumes.[18][19] Behavioral finance theoretical models, such as those developed by Wei and Kim (1997)[20] or Westerhoff and Dieci (2004)[21] suggest that transaction taxes can reduce volatility, at least in the foreign exchange market. In contrast, some papers find a positive effect of a transaction tax on market volatility.[22][23] Lanne and Vesala (2006) argue that a transaction tax "is likely to amplify, not dampen, volatility in foreign exchange markets", because such tax penalises informed market participants disproportionately more than uninformed ones, leading to volatility increases.[24]

Empirical studies

In most of the available empirical studies however, no statistically significant causal link has been found between an increase in transaction costs (transaction taxes or government-controlled minimum brokerage commissions) and a reduction in volatility—in fact a frequent unintended consequence observed by 'early adopters' after the imposition of a financial transactions tax (see Werner, 2003)[25] has been an increase in the volatility of stock market returns, usually coinciding with significant declines in liquidity (market volume) and thus in taxable revenue (Umlauf, 1993).[26]

For a recent evidence to the contrary, see, e.g., Liu and Zhu (2009),[27] which may be affected by selection bias given that their Japanese sample is subsumed by a research conducted in 14 Asian countries by Hu (1998),[28] showing that "an increase in tax rate reduces the stock price but has no significant effect on market volatility". As Liu and Zhu (2009) point out, [...] the different experience in Japan highlights the comment made by Umlauf (1993) that it is hazardous to generalize limited evidence when debating important policy issues such as the STT [securities transaction tax] and brokerage commissions."

See also "Tobin tax proponents response to empirical evidence on volatility"

Historical attempts to reduce speculation via fixed exchange rates

Matthew Sinclair, Research Director of TaxPayers' Alliance, notes that

one reason why few have supported a Tobin tax is that worries about foreign exchange speculation have slowly subsided as more countries have moved towards floating exchange rates, which do more to limit the potential for exchange rate speculation than a Tobin tax possibly could. Attempts to fix rates such as – in the 1980s and 1990s – the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) meant that we got large and sudden movements in exchange rates when speculators sensed that a peg could not be maintained, rather than the more fluid shifts of today.[29]

Is there an optimum Tobin tax rate?

When James Tobin was interviewed by Der Spiegel in 2001, the tax rate he suggested was 0.5%.[4][5][6] His use of the phrase "let's say" ("sagen wir") indicated that he was not, at that point, in an interview setting, trying to be precise. Others have tried to be more precise or practical in their search for the Tobin tax rate.

Tax rates of the magnitude of 0.1%-1% have been proposed by normative economists, without addressing how practicable these would be to implement. In positive economics studies however, where due reference was made to the prevailing market conditions, the resulting tax rates have been significantly lower.[citation needed]

According to Garber (1996), competitive pressure on transaction costs (spreads) in currency markets has reduced these costs to fractions of a basis point. For example the EUR.USD currency pair trades with spreads as tight as 1/10 of a basis point, i.e. with just a 0.00001 difference between the bid and offer price, so "a tax on transactions in foreign exchange markets imposed unilaterally, 6/1000 of a basis point (or 0.00006%) is a realistic maximum magnitude."[30] Similarly Shvedov (2004) concludes that "even making the unrealistic assumption that the rate of 0.00006% causes no reduction of trading volume, the tax on foreign currency exchange transactions would yield just $4.3 billion a year, despite an annual turnover in dozens of trillion dollars.[31]

Accordingly, one of the modern Tobin tax versions, called the Sterling Stamp Duty, sponsored by certain UK charities, has a rate of 0.005% "in order to avoid market

distortions", i.e., 1/100 of what Tobin himself envisaged in 2001. Sterling Stamp Duty supporters argue that this tax rate would not adversely affect currency markets and could still raise large sums of money.[32]

The same rate of 0.005% was proposed for a currency transactions tax (CTT) in a report prepared by Rodney Schmidt for The North-South Institute (a Canadian NGO whose "research supports global efforts to [..] improve international financial systems and institutions"),.[33] Schmidt (2007) used the observed negative relationship between bid-ask spreads and transactions volume in foreign exchange markets to estimate the maximum "non-disruptive rate" of a currency transaction tax. A CTT tax rate designed with a pragmatic goal of raising revenue for various development projects, rather than to fulfill Tobin's original goals (of "slowing the flow of capital across borders" and "preventing or managing exchange rate crises"), should avoid altering the existing "fundamental market behavior", and thus, according to Schmidt, must not exceed 0.00005, i.e., the observed levels of currency transactions costs (bid-ask spreads).[34]

Assuming that all currency market participants incur the same maximum level of transaction costs (the full cost of the bid-ask spread), as opposed to earning them in their capacity of market makers, and assuming that no untaxed substitutes exist for spot currency markets transactions (such as currency futures and currency exchange traded funds), Schmidt (2007) finds that that a CTT rate of 0.00005 would be nearly volume-neutral, reducing foreign exchange transaction volumes by only 14%. Such volume-neutral CTT tax would raise relatively little revenue though, estimated at around $33 bn annually, i.e., an order of magnitude less than the "carbon tax [which] has by far the greatest revenue-raising potential, estimated at $130-750 bn annually." The author warns however that both these market-based revenue estimates "are necessarily speculative", and he has more confidence in the revenue-raising potential of "The International Finance Facility (IFF) and International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm)."[34]

In 2000, a representative of another "pro-Tobin tax" non-governmental organization stated that Tobin's idea was

to ‘throw some sand in the wheels’ of speculative flows. For a currency transaction to be profitable [to the speculator], the change in value of the currency must be greater than the proposed tax. Since speculative currency trades occur on much smaller margins, the Tobin Tax would reduce or eliminate the profits and, logically, the incentive to speculate. The tax is designed to help stabilize exchange rates by reducing the volume of speculation. And it is set deliberately low so as not to have an adverse effect on trade in goods and services or long-term investments.[35]

Is the tax easy to avoid?

Technical feasibility

Although Tobin had said his own tax idea was unfeasible in practice, Joseph Stiglitz, former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, said, on October 5,

2009, that modern technology meant that was no longer the case. Stiglitz said, the tax is "much more feasible today" than a few decades ago, when Tobin recanted.[36]

However, on November 7, 2009, at the G20 finance ministers summit in Scotland, Dominique Strauss-Khan, head of the International Monetary Fund, said "transactions are very difficult to measure and so it's very easy to avoid a transaction tax."[37]

Nevertheless in early December 2009, economist Stephany Griffith-Jones agreed that the "greater centralisation and automisation of the exchanges' and banks' clearing and settlements systems ... makes avoidance of payment more difficult and less desirable."[38]

In January, 2010, feasibility of the tax was supported and clarified by researchers Rodney Schmidt, Stephan Schulmeister and Bruno Jetin who noted “it is technically easy to collect a financial tax from exchanges ... transactions taxes can be collected by the central counterparty at the point of the trade, or automatically in the clearing or settlement process."[39][40] (All large-value financial transactions go through three steps. First dealers agree to a trade; then the dealers’ banks match the two sides of the trade through an electronic central clearing system; and finally, the two individual financial instruments are transferred simultaneously to a central settlement system. Thus a tax can be collected at the few places where all trades are ultimately cleared or settled.)[40][41]

When presented with the problem of speculators shifting operations to offshore tax havens, a representative of a “pro Tobin tax” NGO argued as follows:

Agreement between nations could help avoid the relocation threat, particularly if the tax were charged at the site where dealers or banks are physically located or at the sites where payments are settled or ‘netted’. The relocation of Chase Manhattan Bank to an offshore site would be expensive, risky and highly unlikely – particularly to avoid a small tax. Globally, the move towards a centralized trading system means transactions are being tracked by fewer and fewer institutions. Hiding trades is becoming increasingly difficult. Transfers to tax havens like the Cayman Islands could be penalized at double the agreed rate or more. Citizens of participating countries would also be taxed regardless of where the transaction was carried out.[35]

Based on digital technology, a new form of taxation, levied on bank transactions, was successfully used in Brazil from 1993 to 2007 and proved to be evasion-proof, more efficient and less costly than orthodox tax models. In his book, Bank transactions: pathway to the single tax ideal, Marcos Cintra carries out a qualitative and quantitative in-depth comparison of the efficiency, equity and compliance costs of a bank transactions tax relative to orthodox tax systems, and opens new perspectives for the use of modern banking technology in tax reform across the world.[42]

See also: Currency transaction report, Money Laundering Control Act, Bank Secrecy Act, Suspicious activity report, Money laundering, Structuring, and Electronic trading

How many nations are needed to make it feasible?

There has been debate as to whether one single nation could unilaterally implement a "Tobin tax." Speaking to this question, Schmidt states,

"It is possible for a single country to apply a securities transaction tax unilaterally without significant capital flight to exchanges in other jurisdictions. There are many examples of such taxes already in existence. Britain levies a "Stamp Duty", a 0.5% tax on purchases of shares of UK companies whether the transaction occurs in the UK or overseas. Such specific financial transaction taxes exist in Austria, Greece, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Hong Kong, China and Singapore. The state of New York levies a stamp duty on trades taking place on both the New York Stock Exchange and on NASDAQ."[41]

In the year 2000, "eighty per cent of foreign-exchange trading [took] place in just seven cities. Agreement [to implement the tax] by [just three cities,] London, New York and Tokyo alone, would capture 58 per cent of speculative trading."[35]

Evaluating the Tobin tax as a general Financial Transaction Tax (FTT)

See also: Financial transaction tax and Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Bill

Sweden's experience in implementing Tobin taxes in the form of general financial transaction taxes

In July, 2006, analyst Marion G. Wrobel examined the actual international experiences of various countries in implementing financial transaction taxes.[43] Wrobel's paper highlighted the Swedish experience with financial transaction taxes. In January 1984, Sweden introduced a 0.5% tax on the purchase or sale of an equity security. Thus a round trip (purchase and sale) transaction resulted in a 1% tax. In July 1986 the rate was doubled. In January 1989, a considerably lower tax of 0.002% on fixed-income securities was introduced for a security with a maturity of 90 days or less. On a bond with a maturity of five years or more, the tax was 0.003%.

The revenues from taxes were disappointing; for example, revenues from the tax on fixed-income securities were initially expected to amount to 1,500 million Swedish kroner per year. They did not amount to more than 80 million Swedish kroner in any year and the average was closer to 50 million.[44] In addition, as taxable trading volumes fell, so did revenues from capital gains taxes, entirely offsetting revenues from the equity transactions tax that had grown to 4,000 million Swedish kroner by 1988.[45]

On the day that the tax was announced, share prices fell by 2.2%. But there was leakage of information prior to the announcement, which might explain the 5.35% price decline in the 30 days prior to the announcement. When the tax was doubled, prices again fell by another 1%. These declines were in line with the capitalized value of future tax payments resulting

from expected trades. It was further felt that the taxes on fixed-income securities only served to increase the cost of government borrowing, providing another argument against the tax.

Even though the tax on fixed-income securities was much lower than that on equities, the impact on market trading was much more dramatic. During the first week of the tax, the volume of bond trading fell by 85%, even though the tax rate on five-year bonds was only 0.003%. The volume of futures trading fell by 98% and the options trading market disappeared. On 15 April 1990, the tax on fixed-income securities was abolished. In January 1991 the rates on the remaining taxes were cut in half and by the end of the year they were abolished completely. Once the taxes were eliminated, trading volumes returned and grew substantially in the 1990s.

Tobin tax proponents reaction to the Swedish experience

The Swedish experience of a transaction tax was with purchase or sale of equity securities, fixed income securities and derivatives. In global international currency trading, however, the situation could, some argue, look quite different. In 2000, Round argued as follows:

[The Tobin tax] could boost world trade by helping to stabilize exchange rates. Wildly fluctuating rates play havoc with businesses dependent on foreign exchange as prices and profits move up and down, depending on the relative value of the currencies being used. When importers and exporters can’t be certain from one day to the next what their money is worth, economic planning – including job creation – goes out the window. Reduced exchange-rate volatility means that businesses would need to spend less money ‘hedging’ (buying currencies in anticipation of future price changes), thus freeing up capital for investment in new production.[35]

Wrobel's studies do not address the global economy as a whole, as James Tobin did when he spoke of "the nineties' crises in Mexico, South East Asia and Russia,"[7][46] which included the 1994 economic crisis in Mexico, the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, and the 1998 Russian financial crisis.

Who would gain and who would lose if the Tobin tax (FTT) were implemented?

See also: Financial transaction tax and Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Bill

Views of ABAC (APEC Business Advisory Council) expressed in open letter to IMF

The APEC Business Advisory Council, the business representatives' body in APEC, which is the forum for facilitating economic growth, cooperation, trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region, expressed its views in a letter to the IMF on 15 February 2010. The APEC Business Advisory Council stated:

We believe that imposition of a global tax is an inappropriate response and a further burden to industries, especially small and medium enterprises, and consumers in the wake of the global financial crisis. We also believe that the proposals under consideration would be harmful for a range of additional reasons, including the practical challenges of implementing any such tax.[47]

In addition, ABAC expressed further concerns in the letter:-

Key to the APEC agenda is reduction of transaction costs. The proposal is directly counterproductive to this goal.

It would have a very significant negative impact on real economic recovery, as these additional costs are likely to further reduce financing of business activities at a time when markets remain fragile and prospects for the global economy are still uncertain.

Industries and consumers as a whole would be unfairly penalized. It would further weaken financial markets and reduce the liquidity, particularly in

the case of illiquid assets. Effective implementation would be virtually impossible, especially as opportunities

for cross-border arbitrage arise from decisions of certain jurisdictions not to adopt the tax or to exempt particular activities.

There is no global consensus why a tax is needed and what the revenue would be used for, and therefore no understanding how much is needed. Any consequential tax would need to be supported by clear consensus for its application.

Note - APEC's 21 Member Economies are Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, The Republic of the Philippines, The Russian Federation, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Thailand, United States of America, Viet Nam.

Views of the ITUC/APLN (Asia-Pacific Labour Network) expressed in their statement to the 2010 APEC Economic Leaders Meeting

The International Trade Union Confederation/Asia-Pacific Labour Network (ITUC/APLN), the informal trade union body of the Asia-Pacific, supported the Tobin Tax in their Statement to the 2010 APEC Economic Leaders Meeting. The representatives of APEC's national trade unions centers also met with the Japanese Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, the host Leader of APEC for 2010, and called for the Prime Minister's support on the Tobin Tax.[48]

The ITUC/APLN stated:

APEC Leaders should support measures that will downsize the financial sector and return it to its legitimate function of serving the real economy. Instead of fiscal austerity policies and increased expenditure cuts APEC economies should exploit new sources of finance, such as the Financial Transactions Tax (FTT), and raise more revenue with progressive tax systems.[48]

The ITUC shares its support for Tobin Tax with the Trade Union Advisory Council (TUAC), the official OECD trade union body, in a research[49] on the feasibility, strengths and weaknesses of a potential Tobin Tax. ITUC, APLN and TUAC refer to Tobin Tax as the Financial Transactions Tax.

Would 'regular investors like you and me' lose?

An economist speaking out against the common belief that investment banks would bear the burden of a Tobin tax is Simon Johnson, Professor of Economics at the MIT and a former Chief Economist at the IMF, who in a BBC Radio 4 interview discussing banking system reforms presented his views on the Tobin tax

Evan Davis, BBC Radio 4:

There are various ideas around, aren't there, one of them is a Tobin tax, it's been associated with the [British] Prime Minister—a tax on global financial transactions. Is that a response, do you think, to the problems created by large banks and big bail-outs?

Prof. Simon Johnson:

I think it's hmm... partially a response, or an attempt to respond, that's not my preferred [...] approach to the problem, I think that would lead to a lot of distortions, a lot of moving of activities offshore. If you did it at the full level of the G20, you might be able to get some traction. Evasion at that level would be hard. But still I think it doesn't address the core problem which is really about financial institutions that are 'Too Big to Fail'. Financial transaction tax is more of a tax on regular people like you and me.[50][51]

Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Bill

Main article: Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Bill

In 2009, U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon proposed a financial transaction tax in his "Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Bill". (This was proposed domestically for the United States only.)[52]

Would there be net job losses if a FTT tax was introduced?

Schwabish (2005) examined the potential effects of introducing a stock transaction(or "transfer") tax in a single city (New York) on employment not only in the securities industry, but also in the supporting industries. A financial transactions tax would lead to job losses also in non-financial sectors of the economy through the so called multiplier effect forwarding in a magnified form any taxes imposed on Wall Street employees through their reduced demand to their suppliers and supporting industries. The author estimated the ratios of financial- to non-financial job losses of between 10:1 to 10:4, that is "a 10 percent decrease in securities industry employment would depress employment in the retail, services, and restaurant sectors by more than 1 percent; in the business services sector by about 4 percent; and in total private jobs by about 1 percent."[53]

It is also possible to estimate the impact of a reduction in stock market volume caused by taxing stock transactions on the rise in the overall unemployment rate. For every 10 percent decline in stock market volume, elasticities estimated by Schwabish[53] implied that a stock transaction ("transfer") tax could cost New York City between 30,000 and 42,000 private-sector jobs, and if the stock market volume reductions reached levels observed by Umlauf (1993) in Sweden after a stock FTT was introduced there ("By 1990, more than 50% of all Swedish trading had moved to London")[26] then according to Schwabish (2005), following an introduction of a FTT tax, there would be 150,000-210,000 private-sector jobs losses in the New York alone.

In 2000, Round argued as follows:

When importers and exporters can’t be certain from one day to the next what their money is worth, economic planning—including job creation—goes out the window. Reduced exchange-rate volatility means that businesses would need to spend less money ‘hedging’ (buying currencies in anticipation of future price changes), thus freeing up capital for investment in new production [and the accompanying new jobs].[35]

The cost of currency hedges—and thus "certainty what importers and exporters' money is worth"—has nothing to do with volatility whatsoever, as this cost is exclusively determined by the interest rate differental between two currencies. Nevertheless, as Tobin said, "If ... [currency] is suddenly withdrawn, countries have to drastically increase interest rates for their currency to still be attractive."[3][4]

Is there an optimum tax rate?

Financial transaction tax rates of the magnitude of 0.1%-1% have been proposed by normative economists, without addressing the practicability of implementing a tax at these levels. In positive economics studies however, where due reference was paid to the prevailing market conditions, the resulting tax rates have been significantly lower.

For instance, Edwards (1993) concluded that if the transaction tax revenue from taxing the futures markets were to be maximized (see Laffer curve), with the tax rate not leading to a prohibitively large increase in the marginal cost of market participants, the rate would have to be set so low that "a tax on futures markets will not achieve any important social objective and will not generate much revenue."[54]

Political opinion

Opinions are divided between those who applaud that the Tobin tax could protect countries from spillovers of financial crises, and those who claim that the tax would also constrain the effectiveness of the global economic system, increase price volatility, widen bid-ask spreads for end users such as investors, savers and hedgers, and destroy liquidity.

Tobin tax proponents response to empirical evidence on volatility

Lack of direct supporting evidence for stabilizing (volatility-reducing) properties of Tobin-style transaction taxes in econometric research is acknowledged by some of the Tobin tax supporters:

Ten studies report a positive relationship between transaction taxes and short-term price volatility, five studies did not find any significant relationship. (Schulmeister et al, 2008, p. 18).[55]

These Tobin tax proponents have to therefore rely on indirect evidence in their favor, reinterpreting studies which do not deal directly with volatility, but instead with trading volume (with volume being generally reduced by transaction taxes, though it constitutes their tax base, see: negative feedback loop). This allows these Tobin tax proponents to state that "some studies show (implicitly) that higher transaction costs might dampen price volatility. This is so because these studies report that a reduction of trading activities is associated with lower price volatility." So if a study finds that reducing trading volume or trading frequency reduces volatility, these Tobin tax supporters combine it with the observation that Tobin-style taxes are volume-reducing, and thus should also indirectly reduce volatility ("this finding implies a negative relationship between [..] transaction tax [..] and volatility, because higher transaction costs will 'ceteris paribus' always dampen trading activities)." (Schulmeister et al., 2008, p. 18).[55]

There is yet another reason why some proponents of the Tobin tax maintain that it can reduce volatility, despite prevailing empirical evidence to the contrary. This is possible, because some Tobin tax supporters created a concept of a separate, custom-defined volatility. Rather than adopting one of the standard statistical definitions (e.g., conditional variance of returns, see Engle, 1982 [56]) leading economists favoring the Tobin tax prefer to define volatility as a "long-term overshooting of speculative prices" (see Tobin, 1978 [57] and Eichengreen, Tobin and Wyplosz, 1995 [58]). Evidence about this special type of volatility is missing and this is why some of the proponents, instead of conducting their own tests, prefer to blame financial econometric researchers for not addressing their special needs:

Unfortunately, all empirical studies on the relationship between transaction costs, trading volume and price volatility in general, and on the possible effects of an FTT on volatility in particular, deal with short-term statistical volatility only. Therefore, the results of these studies cannot help to answer the question whether or not an FTT will mitigate misalignments of asset prices over the medium and long run.—Schulmeister et al, 2008, p. 11[55]

Thus the beneficial impact of transaction taxes on the "Tobin volatility" can co-exist as a valid economic theory even without direct supporting evidence from the statistical volatility research, simply because of the special volatility definition, which allows all economists defending the Tobin tax to escape Popperian falsifiability.[citation needed]

Another shortcoming of all of the empirical volatility studies pointed out by some of the Tobin tax proponents is the lack of distinction between "basic" and "excessive" volatility, which "might have contributed to the contradictory and, hence, inconclusive results of these

studies" (Schulmeister et al., 2008, p. 11-12).[55] Unfortunately, no tests have been conducted so far, which would be able to operationalize "excessive" volatility assumed to exist by the Tobin tax theory (see Schulmeister et al., 2008, p. 11),[55] therefore the acceptance of the Tobin-style transactions tax as a fiscal or monetary policy instrument requires clear understanding that basic theoretical phenomena underlying this tax, such as "excessive" volatility, still remain untested.

Should speculators be encouraged, penalized or dissuaded?

The Tobin tax rests on the premise that speculators ought to be, as Tobin puts it, "dissuaded."[4][5][6][7] This premise itself is a matter of debate: See main debate at main article on "speculation"..

Matthew Sinclair, Research Director of TaxPayers' Alliance, argues that "The whole idea of a Tobin tax is based on the flawed view that trading – or speculation – is a bad thing. The truth is that it isn’t: it helps the process of price discovery, makes markets work better, enhances liquidity, ensures that resources are priced correctly and generally helps oil the cogs of the global economy."[29]

On the other side of the debate were the leaders of Germany who, in May 2008, planned to propose a worldwide ban on oil trading by speculators, blaming the 2008 oil price rises on manipulation by hedge funds. At that time India, with similar concerns, had already suspended futures trading of five commodities.[59]

On December 3, 2009, US Congressman Peter DeFazio stated, "The American taxpayers bailed out Wall Street during a crisis brought on by reckless speculation in the financial markets, ... This [ proposed financial transaction tax ] legislation will force Wall Street to do their part and put people displaced by that crisis back to work."[52]

On January 21, 2010, President Barack Obama endorsed the Volcker Rule which deals with proprietary trading of investment banks[60] and restricts banks from making certain speculative kinds of investments if they are not on behalf of their customers.[60] Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, President Obama's advisor, has argued that such speculative activity played a key role in the financial crisis of 2007–2010.

Volcker endorsed only the UK's tax on bank bonuses, calling it "interesting", but was wary about imposing levies on financial market transactions, because he is "instinctively opposed" to any tax on financial transactions.[61]

Questions of volatility

In February 2010, Tim Harford, writing in the Undercover Economist column of the Financial Times, commented directly on the claims of Keynes and Tobin that 'taxes on financial transactions would reduce financial volatility'.[62] Harford wrote:-

This is possible but far from obvious, when you realise that the tax might encourage bigger, more irregular financial transactions. An analogy: if I have to pay a charge whenever I use a cash machine, I make fewer, larger withdrawals and the amount of money in my wallet fluctuates more widely. Bear in mind, too, that the most bubble-prone asset market is for housing, which is bought in very lumpy, long-term chunks.

There isn’t much evidence as to whether transaction charges reduce volatility. What there is is mixed – but perhaps leaning against the Robin Hood tax. On the French stock market, coarser 'tick sizes' raise spreads and act like a tax: they increase volatility. Transaction taxes on Swedish stocks in the 1980s reduced prices and turnover but left volatility unchanged.

Comparing Currency Transaction Taxes (CTT) and Financial Transaction Taxes (FTT)

See also: Currency transaction tax and Financial transaction tax

Research evidence

In 2003, researchers like Aliber et al. proposed that empirical evidence on the observed effects of the already introduced and abolished stock transaction taxes[where?] and a hypothetical CTT (Tobin) can probably be treated interchangeably.[63] They did not find any evidence on the differential effects of introducing or removing, stock transactions taxes or a hypothetical currency (Tobin) tax on any subset of markets or all markets.

Researchers have used models belonging to the GARCH family[64][65][66] to describe both the volatility behavior of stock market returns and the volatility behavior of foreign exchange rates. This is used as evidence that the similarity between currencies and stocks in the context of a tax designed to curb volatility such as a CTT (or FTT in general) can be inferred from the almost identical (statistically indistinguishable) behavior of the volatilities of equity and exchange rate returns.

Practical considerations

Hanke et al. state, "The economic consequences of introducing a [currency-only] Tobin Tax are [...] completely unknown, as such a tax has not been introduced on any real foreign exchange market so far".[67] At the same time, even in the case of stock transaction taxes, where some empirical evidence is available, researchers warn that "it is hazardous to generalize limited evidence when debating important policy issues such as the transaction taxes".[26][27]

According to Stephan Schulmeister, Margit Schratzenstaller, and Oliver Picek (2008), from the practical viewpoint it is no longer possible to introduce a non-currency transactions tax (even if foreign exchange transactions were formally exempt) since the advent of currency derivatives and currency exchange traded funds. All of these would have to be taxed together under a "non-currency" financial transactions tax (such as under certain proposals]

in the U.S. in 2009 which, although not intending to tax currencies directly, would still do so due to taxation of currency futures and currency exchange traded funds). Because these three groups of instruments are nearly perfect substitutes, if at least one of these groups were to be exempt, it would likely attract most market volume from the taxed alternatives.[68]

According to Stephan Schulmeister, Margit Schratzenstaller, and Oliver Picek (2008), restricting the financial transactions tax to foreign exchange only (as envisaged originally by Tobin) would not be desirable.[68] Any "general FTT seems...more attractive than a specific transaction tax" (such as a currency-only Tobin tax), because it could reduce tax avoidance (i.e., substitution of similar untaxed instruments), could significantly increase the tax base and could be implemented more easily on organized exchanges than in a dealership market like the global foreign exchange market.[68] (See also the discussion of tax avoidance as it relates to a currency transaction tax.)

On October 5, 2009, Joseph Stiglitz said that any new tax should be levied on all asset classes – not merely foreign exchange, and would be based on the gross value of the assets, thereby helping to discourage the creation of asset bubbles.[36]

Original idea and alter-globalization movement

Tobin's more specific concept of a "currency transaction tax" from 1972 lay dormant for more than 20 years but was revived by the advent of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. In December, 1997 Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, renewed the debate around the Tobin tax with an editorial titled "Disarming the markets". Ramonet proposed to create an association for the introduction of this tax, which was named ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens). The tax then became an issue of the global justice movement or alter-globalization movement and a matter of discussion not only in academic institutions but even in streets and in parliaments in the UK, France, and around the world.

In an interview[69] given to the italian independent radio network Radio Popolare in July 2001 James Tobin distanced himself from the global justice movement. «There are agencies and groups in Europe that have used the Tobin Tax as an issue of broader campaigns, for reasons that go far beyond my proposal. My proposal was made into a sort of milestone for an antiglobalization program». James Tobin's interview with Radio Popolare was quoted by italian foreign minister at the time, former director-general of the World Trade Organisation Renato Ruggiero, during a Parliamentary debate on the eve of the G8 2001 summit in Genoa. Afterwards James Tobin distanced himself from the global justice movement [70][71] also in an interview given to Der Spiegel in 2001, and continued to state the validity of his proposal,

I have absolutely nothing in common with those anti-globalisation rebels. Of course I am pleased; but the loudest applause is coming from the wrong side. Look, I am an economist and, like most economists, I support free trade. Furthermore, I am in favour of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation. They've

hijacked my name. ... The tax on foreign exchange transactions was devised to cushion exchange rate fluctuations.[4][5][6][7] (See last part of quote in the above lead section).

Tobin observed that, while his original proposal had only the goal of "putting a brake on the foreign exchange trafficking", the antiglobalization movement had stressed "the income from the taxes with which they want to finance their projects to improve the world". He declared himself not contrary to this use of the tax's income, but stressed that it was not the important aspect of the tax.

ATTAC and other organizations have recognized that while they still consider Tobin's original aim as paramount, they think the tax could produce funds for development needs in the South (such as the Millennium Development Goals),[32] and allow governments, and therefore citizens, to reclaim part of the democratic space conceded to the financial markets.

In March, 2002, London School of Economics Professor Willem Buiter, who studied under James Tobin, wrote a glowing obituary for the man,[72] but also remarked that, "This [Tobin Tax] ... was in recent years adopted by some of the most determined enemies of trade liberalisation, globalisation and the open society." Buiter added, "The proposal to use the Tobin tax as a means of raising revenues for development assistance was rejected by Tobin, and he forcefully repudiated the anti-globalisation mantra of the Seattle crowd." In September 2009, Buiter also wrote in the Financial Times, "Tobin was a genius ... but the Tobin tax was probably his one daft idea".[73]

In those same "years" that Buiter spoke of, the Tobin tax was also "adopted" or supported in varying degrees by the people who were not, as he put it, "enemies of trade liberalisation." Among them were several supporters from 1990 to 1999, including Larry Summers and several from 2000 to 2004, including lukewarm support from George Soros.

Tobin tax proposals and implementations around the world

It was originally assumed that the Tobin tax would require multilateral implementation, since one country acting alone would find it very difficult to implement this tax. Many people have therefore argued that it would be best implemented by an international institution. It has been proposed that having the United Nations manage a Tobin tax would solve this problem and would give the UN a large source of funding independent from donations by participating states. However, there have also been initiatives of national dimension about the tax. (This is in addition to the many countries that have foreign exchange controls.)

Whilst finding some support in countries with strong left-wing political movements such as France and Latin America, the Tobin tax proposal came under much criticism from economists and governments, especially those with liberal markets and a large international banking sector, who said it would be impossible to implement and would destabilise foreign exchange markets.

Most of the actual implementation of Tobin taxes, whether in the form of a specific currency transaction tax, or a more general financial transaction tax, has occurred at a national level. In July, 2006, analyst Marion G. Wrobel examined the international experiences of various countries with financial transaction taxes.[43]

Sweden's experience with financial transaction taxes

See also: Financial transaction tax

Wrobel's paper highlighted the Swedish experience with financial transaction taxes.[43] In January 1984, Sweden introduced a 0.5% tax on the purchase or sale of an equity security. Thus a round trip (purchase and sale) transaction resulted in a 1% tax. In July 1986 the rate was doubled. In January 1989, a considerably lower tax of 0.002% on fixed-income securities was introduced for a security with a maturity of 90 days or less. On a bond with a maturity of five years or more, the tax was 0.003%.

The revenues from taxes were disappointing; for example, revenues from the tax on fixed-income securities were initially expected to amount to 1,500 million Swedish kronor per year. They did not amount to more than 80 million Swedish kronor in any year and the average was closer to 50 million.[44] In addition, as taxable trading volumes fell, so did revenues from capital gains taxes, entirely offsetting revenues from the equity transactions tax that had grown to 4,000 million Swedish kronor by 1988.[45]

On the day that the tax was announced, share prices fell by 2.2%. But there was leakage of information prior to the announcement, which might explain the 5.35% price decline in the 30 days prior to the announcement. When the tax was doubled, prices again fell by another 1%. These declines were in line with the capitalized value of future tax payments resulting from expected trades. It was further felt that the taxes on fixed-income securities only served to increase the cost of government borrowing, providing another argument against the tax.

Even though the tax on fixed-income securities was much lower than that on equities, the impact on market trading was much more dramatic. During the first week of the tax, the volume of bond trading fell by 85%, even though the tax rate on five-year bonds was only 0.003%. The volume of futures trading fell by 98% and the options trading market disappeared. On 15 April 1990, the tax on fixed-income securities was abolished. In January 1991 the rates on the remaining taxes were cut in half and by the end of the year they were abolished completely. Once the taxes were eliminated, trading volumes returned and grew substantially in the 1990s.[citation needed]

Tobin tax proponents reaction to the Swedish experience

The Swedish experience of a transaction tax was with purchase or sale of equity securities, fixed income securities and derivatives. In global international currency trading, however, the situation could, some argue, look quite different. In 2000, Round argued as follows:

[The Tobin tax] could boost world trade by helping to stabilize exchange rates. Wildly fluctuating rates play havoc with businesses dependent on foreign exchange as prices and profits move up and down, depending on the relative value of the currencies being used. When importers and exporters can’t be certain from one day to the next what their money is worth, economic planning – including job creation – goes out the window. Reduced exchange-rate volatility means that businesses would need to spend less money ‘hedging’ (buying currencies in anticipation of future price changes), thus freeing up capital for investment in new production.[35]

Wrobel's studies do not address the global economy as a whole, as James Tobin did when he spoke of "the nineties' crises in Mexico, South East Asia and Russia,"[7][46] which included the 1994 economic crisis in Mexico, the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, and the 1998 Russian financial crisis.

United Kingdom experience with stock transaction tax (Stamp Duty)

See also: Stamp Duty Reserve Tax

An existing example of a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) is the Stamp Duty Reserve Tax (SDRT). This tax on share purchases was introduced in the UK in 1963,[74] preceding by almost a decade the Tobin tax on currency transactions. The initial rate of the UK Stamp Duty was 2%, subsequently fluctuating between 1% and 2%, until a process of its gradual reduction started in 1984, when the rate was halved, first from 2% to 1%, and then once again in 1986 from 1% to the current level of 0.5%.[74]

The changes in Stamp Duty rates in 1974, 1984, and 1986 provided researchers with "natural experiments", allowing them to measure the impact of transaction taxes on market volume, volatility, returns, and valuations of UK companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. Jackson and O'Donnel (1985), using UK quarterly data, found that the 1% cut in the Stamp Duty in April 1984 from 2% to 1% lead to a "dramatic 70% increase in equity turnover" .[75] Analyzing all three Stamp Duty rate changes, Saporta and Kan (1997) found that the announcements of tax rate increases (decreases) were followed by negative (positive) returns, but even though these results were statistically significant, they were likely to be influenced by other factors, because the announcements were made on budget days.[76] Bond et al. (2005) confirmed the findings of previous studies, noting also that the impact of the announced tax rate cuts was more beneficial (increasing market value more significantly) in case of larger firms, which had higher turnover, and were therefore more affected by the transaction tax than stocks of smaller companies, less frequently traded.[77]

Because the UK tax code provides exemptions from the Stamp Duty Reserve Tax for all financial intermediaries, including market makers, investment banks and other members of the LSE,[78] and due to the strong growth of the contracts for difference (CFD) industry, which provides UK investors with untaxed substitutes for LSE stocks, according to the Oxera (2007) report,[74] more than 70% percent of the total UK stock market volume, including the entire institutional volume remained (in 2005) exempt from the Stamp Duty, in contrast to the common perception of this tax as a "tax on bank transactions" or a "tax on

speculation". On the other hand, as much as 40% of the Stamp Duty revenues come from taxing foreign residents,[79] because the tax is "chargeable whether the transaction takes place in the UK or overseas, and whether either party is resident in the UK or not."[77]

Sterling Stamp Duty - a currency transactions tax proposed for pound sterling

In 2005 the Tobin tax was developed into a modern proposal by the United Kingdom NGO Stamp Out Poverty. It simplified the two-tier tax in favour of a mechanism designed solely as a means for raising development revenue. The currency market by this time had grown to $2,000 billion a day. To investigate the feasibility of such a tax they hired the City of London firm Intelligence Capital, who found that a tax on Pound sterling wherever it was traded in the world, as opposed to a tax on all currencies traded in the UK, was indeed feasible and could be unilaterally implemented by the UK government.[32]

The Sterling Stamp Duty, as it became known, was to be set at a rate 200 times lower than Tobin had envisaged in 2001, which “pro Tobin tax” supporters claim wouldn't have affected currency markets and could still raise large sums of money. The global currency market grew to $3,200 billion a day in 2007, or £400,000 billion per annum with the trade in sterling, the fourth most traded currency in the world, worth £34,000 billion a year.[80] A sterling stamp duty set at 0.005% as some claim would have raised in the region of £2 billion a year in 2007.[81] The All Party Parliamentary Group for Debt, Aid and Trade published a report in November 2007 into financing for development in which it recommended that the UK government undertake rigorous research into the implementation of a 0.005% stamp duty on all sterling foreign exchange transactions, to provide additional revenue to help bridge the funding gap required to pay for the Millennium Development Goals.[82]

Multinational proposals

In 1996 the United Nations Development Programme sponsored a comprehensive feasibility and cost-benefit study of the Tobin tax: Haq, Mahbub ul; Kaul, Inge; Grunberg, Isabelle (August 1996). The Tobin Tax: Coping with Financial Volatility. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-511180-4.

European idea for a 'first Euro tax'

In late 2001, a Tobin tax amendment was adopted by the French National Assembly. However, it was overturned by March 2002 by the French Senate.[83][84][85]

On June 15, 2004, the Commission of Finance and Budget in the Belgian Federal Parliament approved a bill implementing a Spahn tax.[86] According to the legislation, Belgium will introduce the Tobin tax once all countries of the eurozone introduce a similar law.[87] In July 2005 former Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel called for a European Union Tobin tax to base the communities' financial structure on more stable and independent grounds. However, the proposal was rejected by the European Commission.

On November 23, 2009, the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, after attending a meeting of the Bilderberg Group argued for a European version of the Tobin tax.[88][89] This tax would go beyond just financial transactions: "all shopping and petrol would be taxed.".[88] Countering him was his sister, Christine Van Rompuy, who said, "any new taxes would directly affect the poor".[90]

On June 29, 2011, the European Commission called for Tobin-style taxes on the EU's financial sector to generate direct revenue starting from 2014. At the same time it suggested to reduce existing levies coming from the 27 member states.[91]

Support in some G20 nations

The first nation in the G20 group to formally accept the Tobin tax was Canada.[92] On March 23, 1999, the Canadian House of Commons passed a resolution directing the government to "enact a tax on financial transactions in concert with the international community."[35] However, ten years later, in November 2009, at the G20 finance ministers summit in Scotland, the representatives of the minority government of Canada spoke publicly on the world stage in opposition to that Canadian House of Commons resolution.[37]

In September 2009, French president Nicolas Sarkozy brought up the issue of a Tobin tax once again, suggesting it be adopted by the G20.[93]

On November 7, 2009, prime minister Gordon Brown said that G-20 should consider a tax on speculation, although did not specify that it should be on currency trading alone. The BBC reported that there was a negative response to the plan among the G20.[37]

By December 11, 2009, European Union leaders expressed broad support for a Tobin tax in a communiqué sent to the International Monetary Fund.[12] On that day, the Financial Times reported the following:

Since the Nov 7 [2009] summit of the G20 Finance Ministers , the head of the International Monetary Fund, Mr Strauss-Kahn seems to have softened his doubts, telling the CBI employers' conference: "We have been asked by the G20 to look into financial sector taxes. ... This is an interesting issue. ... We will look at it from various angles and consider all proposals." [94]

For supporters of a Tobin tax, there is a wide range of opinion on who should administer a global Tobin tax and what the revenue should be used for. There are some who think that it should take the form of an insurance: In early November 2009, at the G20 finance ministers summit in Scotland, the British Prime Minister "Mr. Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, suggested that revenues from the Tobin tax could be devoted to the world’s fight against climate change, especially in developing countries. They suggested that funding could come from “a global financial transactions tax." However British officials later argued the main point of a financial transactions tax would be provide insurance for the global taxpayer against a future banking crisis."[12][37]

The feasibility of gradual implementation of the FTT, beginning with a few EU nations

John Dillon contends that it is not necessary to have unanimous agreement on the feasibility of an international FTT before moving forward. He proposes that it could be introduced gradually, beginning probably in Europe where support is strongest. The first stage might involve a levy on financial instruments within a few countries. Stephan Schulmeister of the Austrian Institute for Economic Re-search has suggested that initially Britain and Germany could implement a tax on a range of financial instruments since about 97% of all transactions on European Union exchanges occur in these two countries [41]

This scenario is possible, given the events in May and June, 2010:

On June 27, 2010 at the 2010 G-20 Toronto summit, the G20 leaders declared that a "global tax" was no longer "on the table," but that individual countries will be able to decide whether to implement a levy against financial institutions to recoup billons of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailouts.[95]

Nevertheless Britain, France and Germany had already agreed before the summit to impose a "bank tax." [95] On May 20, 2010, German officials were understood to favour a financial transaction tax over a financial activities tax.[96]

Two simultaneous taxes considered in the European Union

On June 28, 2010, the European Union's executive said it will study whether the European Union should go alone in imposing a tax on financial transactions after G20 leaders failed to agree on the issue.

The financial transactions tax would be separate from a bank levy, or a resolution levy, which some governments are also proposing to impose on banks to insure them against the costs of any future bailouts. EU leaders instructed their finance ministers, in May, 2010, to work out by the end of October 2010, details for the banking levy, but any financial transaction tax remains much more controversial.[97]

Latin America - Bank of the South

In early November 2007, a regional Tobin tax was adopted by the Bank of the South, after an initiative of Presidents Hugo Chavez from Venezuela and Néstor Kirchner from Argentina.[98]

UN Global Tax

According to Stephen Spratt, "the revenues raised could be used for ... international development objectives ... such as meeting the Millennium Development Goals."(,[32] p. 19) These are eight international development goals that 192 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed (in 2000) to achieve by the year 2015.

They include reducing extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics such as AIDS, and developing a global partnership for development.[99]

In 2000, a representative of a “pro Tobin tax” NGO proposed the following:

In the face of increasing income disparity and social inequity, the Tobin Tax represents a rare opportunity to capture the enormous wealth of an untaxed sector and redirect it towards the public good. Conservative estimates show the tax could yield from $150-300 billion annually. The UN estimates that the cost of wiping out the worst forms of poverty and environmental destruction globally would be around $225 billion per year.[35]

At the UN September 2001 World Conference against Racism, when the issue of compensation for colonialism and slavery arose in the agenda, Fidel Castro, the President of Cuba, advocated the Tobin Tax to address that issue. (According to Cliff Kincaid, Castro advocated it "specifically in order to generate U.S. financial reparations to the rest of the world," however a closer reading of Castro's speech shows that he never did mention "the rest of the world" as being recipients of revenue.) Castro cited Holocaust reparations as a previously established precedent for the concept of reparations.[100][101]

Castro also suggested that the United Nations be the administrator of this tax, stating the following:

May the tax suggested by Nobel Prize Laureate James Tobin be imposed in a reasonable and effective way on the current speculative operations accounting for trillions of US dollars every 24 hours, then the United Nations, which cannot go on depending on meager, inadequate, and belated donations and charities, will have one trillion US dollars annually to save and develop the world. Given the seriousness and urgency of the existing problems, which have become a real hazard for the very survival of our species on the planet, that is what would actually be needed before it is too late.[100]

On March 6, 2006, US Congressman Ron Paul stated the following:

The United Nations remains determined to rob from wealthy countries and, after taking a big cut for itself, send what’s left to the poor countries. Of course, most of this money will go to the very dictators whose reckless policies have impoverished their citizens. The UN global tax plan ... resurrects the long-held dream of the 'Tobin Tax'. A dangerous precedent would be set, however: the idea that the UN possesses legitimate taxing authority to fund its operations.[102]

Support and opposition

Main article: Reaction to the Tobin Tax

See also

Currency transaction tax Financial transaction tax Foreign exchange market Spahn tax Bank tax Robin Hood tax

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g James Tobin (July/October 1978). "A Proposal for International Monetary Reform". Eastern Economic Journal (Eastern Economic Association): 153–159. Retrieved 2010-01-31.

2. ^ a b Excerpt from original German article: "wie die Krisen in Mexiko, Südostasien und Russland während der neunziger Jahre gezeigt haben. Meine Steuer würde Notenbanken kleiner Länder Handlungsspielraum zurückgeben und dem Diktat der Finanzmärkte etwas entgegensetzen." - Christian Von Reiermann, and Michaela Schießl (03/09/2001). "Die missbrauchen meinen Namen (translated as "They Are Misusing My Name") (Interview with James Tobin)". Spiegel Online. Retrieved 2010-01-01.

3. ^ a b c "James Tobin: "The antiglobalisation movement has highjacked my name"". Jubilee Research, a successor to Jubilee 2000 UK. September 3, 2001. Archived from the original on 6 March 2005. Retrieved 11 February 2010.

4. ^ a b c d e f Christian Von Reiermann, and Michaela Schießl (03/09/2001). "Die missbrauchen meinen Namen (translated as "They Are Misusing My Name") (Interview with James Tobin)". Spiegel Online. Retrieved 2010-01-01.

5. ^ a b c d Excerpt from original German article:"SPIEGEL: Diese Bewegung will die Einführung einer Steuer auf Devisengeschäfte. Damit sollen die Kapitalmärkte gebändigt und mit den zusätzlichen Einnahmen die Entwicklungshilfe verstärkt werden. Klingt das nicht wie Ihr Vorschlag? Tobin: Ich hatte vorgeschlagen, die Einnahmen der Weltbank zur Verfügung zu stellen. Aber darum ging es mir gar nicht. Die Devisenumsatzsteuer war dafür gedacht, Wechselkursschwankungen einzudämmen. Die Idee ist ganz simpel: Bei jedem Umtausch von einer Währung in die andere würde eine kleine Steuer fällig, sagen wir von einem halben Prozent des Umsatzes. So schreckt man Spekulanten ab. Denn viele Investoren legen ihr Geld sehr kurzfristig in Währungen an. Wird dieses Geld plötzlich zurückgezogen, müssen die Länder die Zinsen drastisch anheben, damit die Währung attraktiv bleibt. Hohe Zinsen aber sind oft desaströs für die heimische Wirtschaft, wie die Krisen in Mexiko, Südostasien und Russland während der neunziger Jahre gezeigt haben. Meine Steuer würde Notenbanken kleiner Länder Handlungsspielraum zurückgeben und dem Diktat der Finanzmärkte etwas entgegensetzen." - Christian Von Reiermann, and Michaela Schießl (03/09/2001). "Die missbrauchen meinen Namen (translated as "They Are Misusing My Name") (Interview with James Tobin)". Spiegel Online. Retrieved 2010-01-01.

6. ^ a b c d Speigel Online International (09/03/2001). "They are misusing my name". English Summaries [of quotes in Spiegel Online]. Speigel Online International. Retrieved 2010-01-01.

7. ^ a b c d e James Tobin-El movimiento antiglobalización abusa de mi nombre8. ^ a b c John Maynard Keynes (1936). "The General Theory of Employment, Interest

and Money". pp. 104, 105 (Chapter 12, Part VI). (Online publisher: Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks; via biblioeconomicus.googlepages.com)

9. ^ a b Paul Bernd Spahn (June 16, 1995). "International Financial Flows and Transactions Taxes: Survey and Options". University of Frankfurt/Main; Paper originally published with the International Monetary Fund as Working Paper WP/95/60.. Retrieved 2010-01-13.

10. ̂ Asia Society: Speeches11. ̂ Peter Wahl and Peter Waldow (April 1, 2001). "Currency Transaction Tax - a

Concept with a Future". World Economy, Ecology & Development Association (WEED). Retrieved 11 February 2010.

12. ^ a b c Tony Barber (2009-12-11). "EU leaders urge IMF to consider global Tobin tax". The Financial Times.

13. ^ a b c Linda McQuaig (March 22, 1998). "The Cult of impotence; Making Sure the Rich Stay Rich". Toronto Star; republished by Hartford Web Publishing. Retrieved 2010-01-11.

14. ^ a b c Ellen Frank (February 2002). "Heavy surf & tsunamis". New Internationalist magazine. Retrieved 23 February 2010.

15. ^ a b Erturk, Korkut (2006). "On the Tobin Tax". Review of Political Economy 18 (1): 71–78. doi:10.1080/09538250500354173

16. ̂ Westerhoff, F. (2003). "Heterogeneous traders and the Tobin Tax". Journal of Evolutionary Economics 13 (1): 53–70. doi:10.1007/s00191-003-0140-5

17. ̂ Palley, T. (1999). "Speculation and Tobin Tax: why sand in the wheels can increase economic efficiency". Journal of Economics 69 (2): 113–126. doi:10.1007/BF01232416

18. ̂ Davidson, P. (1997). "Are grains of sand in the wheels of international finance sufficient to do the job when boulders are often required?". Economic Journal 107 (442): 671–686. doi:10.1111/1468-0297.00183. JSTOR 2957792

19. ̂ Davidson, P. (1998). "Efficiency and fragile speculative financial markets: against the Tobin Tax and for a creditable market maker". American Journal of Economics and Sociology 57 (4): 639–666. doi:10.1111/j.1536-7150.1998.tb03383.x

20. ̂ Shang-Jin Wei and Jungshik Kim (March, 1999). "The Big Players in the Foreign Exchange Market: Do They Trade on Information or Noise?". Center for International Development at Harvard University in its series CID Working Papers with number 5.. Retrieved 2010-01-02.

21. ̂ Westerhoff, F; Dieci, R (2006). "The effectiveness of Keynes–Tobin transaction taxes when heterogeneous agents can trade in different markets: A behavioral finance approach ☆ " . Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 30 (2): 293. doi:10.1016/j.jedc.2004.12.004. Retrieved 2010-01-02.

22. ̂ Kerbl S (2010) "Regulatory Medicine Against Financial Market Instability: What Helps And What Hurts?" arXiv.org. doi:1011.6284

23. ̂ Mannaro K, Marchesi M and Setzu A (2008) "Using an artificial financial market for assessing the impact of tobin-like transaction taxes." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization,67(2)::445-462.

24. ̂ Lanne, Markku; Vesala, Timo (2009). "The effect of a transaction tax on exchange rate volatility". International Journal of Finance & Economics: n/a. doi:10.1002/ijfe.399. SSRN 1018363.

25. ̂ Werner, Ingrid M. (2003). "Comment on ‘Some Evidence that a Tobin Tax on Foreign Exchange Transactions may Increase Volatility’". European Finance Review 7 (3): 511–514. doi:10.1023/B:EUFI.0000022151.50261.40

26. ^ a b c Umlauf, Steven R. (1993). "Transaction taxes and the behavior or the Swedish stock market". Journal of Financial Economics 33 (2): 227–240. doi:10.1016/0304-405X(93)90005-V

27. ^ a b Liu, Shinhua; Zhu, Zhen (2009). "Transaction Costs and Price Volatility: New Evidence from the Tokyo Stock Exchange". Journal of Financial Services Research 36 (1): 65–83. doi:10.1007/s10693-009-0063-x

28. ̂ Hu, Shing-yang (1998). "The effects of the stock transaction tax on the stock market: Experiences from Asian markets". Pacific-Basin Finance Journal 6 (3–4): 347–364. doi:10.1016/S0927-538X(98)00017-1

29. ^ a b http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/media/2009/11/city-am-matthew-sinclair-a-tobin-tax-would-destroy-london-without-making-the-world-safer.html

30. ̂ Garber, Peter M. (1996). "Issues of Enforcement and Evasion in a Tax on Foreign Exchange Transactions,” in: The Tobin Tax: Coping with Financial Volatility. Mahbub ul Haq, Inge Kaul, and Isabelle Grunberg, eds. (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 135.

31. ̂ Shvedov, Maxim (2004). Transaction Tax: General Overview. CRS Report for Congress, Order Code RL32266, p. 7.

32. ^ a b c d Stephen Spratt (September, 2006). "A Sterling Solution". Stamp Out Poverty report. Stamp Out Poverty Campaign.

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2000). "Time for Tobin!". New Internationalist. Retrieved 2009-12-17.36. ^ a b Edmund Conway (05 Oct 2009). "Joseph Stiglitz calls for Tobin tax on all

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38. ̂ Stephany Griffith-Jones (December 7, 2009). "Now let's tax transactions". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2010-01-13.

39. ̂ Bretton Woods Project (April 16, 2010). "Rewriting the rules on exchange rates - See lower box: BOX: Controversy over IMF's likely dismissal of financial transaction taxes". Bretton Woods Project. Retrieved 24 June 2010.

40. ^ a b Rodney Schmidt, Principal Researcher, The North-South Institute, Ottawa (28 January 2010). "Notes on the Feasibility and Impact of a General Financial Transactions Tax; Civil society consultation with the IMF on 28 January 2010". International Monetary Fund. Retrieved 24 June 2010.

41. ^ a b c John Dillon (May 2010). "An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Adopt a Financial Transactions Tax". KAIROS Policy Briefing Paper No. 24 revised and updated. KAIROS. Retrieved 24 June 2010.[dead link]

42. ̂ Marcos Cintra (July, 2009). "Bank transactions: pathway to the single tax ideal. A modern tax technology;the Brazilian experience with a bank transactions tax (1993-2007)". University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 16710. Research Papers in Economics. Retrieved 28 June 2010.

43. ^ a b c Financial Transaction Taxes: The International Experience and the Lessons for Canada. http://dsp-psd.tpsgc.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/BP/bp419-e.htm

44. ^ a b Campbell, John Y. and Froot, Kenneth A. “International Experiences with Securities Transaction Taxes (December 1993),” NBER Working Paper No. W4587. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=338864

45. ^ a b Umlauf, S (1993). "Transaction taxes and the behavior of the Swedish stock market". Journal of Financial Economics 33 (2): 227. doi:10.1016/0304-405X(93)90005-V.

46. ^ a b Archivsuche - Archiv - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten47. ̂ http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/consult/2009/pdf/Comment91.pdf48. ^ a b http://www.ituc-csi.org/japanese-prime-minister-backs-call.html49. ̂ http://www.tuac.org/fr/public/e-docs/00/00/06/7C/document_doc.phtml50. ̂ "Today: Wednesday 6th January". BBC. 6 January 2010.51. ̂ Today programme interview with Prof. Simon Johnson on YouTube52. ^ a b Charles Pope (December 3, 2009). "DeFazio calls for tax on financial

transactions but critics abound". The Oregonian, OregonLive.com. Retrieved 2010-01-04.

53. ^ a b Schwabish, Jonathan A. (2005). "Estimating Employment Spillover Effects In New York City with an Application to The Stock Transfer Tax". Public Finance Review 33 (6): 663–689. doi:10.1177/1091142105278945.

54. ̂ Edwards, Franklin R. (1993). "Taxing transactions in futures markets: Objectives and effects". Journal of Financial Services Research 7 (1): 75–91. doi:10.1007/BF01048341.

55. ^ a b c d e Stephan Schulmeister, Margit Schratzenstaller, and Oliver Picek, 2008. A General Financial Transaction Tax. Motives, Revenues, Feasibility and Effects. Research Study by the Austrian Institute of Economic Research, co-financed by Federal Ministry of Finance and Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour, URL: http://www.wifo.ac.at/wwa/servlet/wwa.upload.DownloadServlet/bdoc/S_2008_FINANCIAL_TRANSACTION_TAX_31819$.PDF

56. ̂ Engle, Robert F. (1982). "Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity with Estimates of Variance of United Kingdom Inflation". Econometrica 50 (4): 987–1008. doi:10.2307/1912773. JSTOR 1912773.

57. ̂ Tobin, James, 1978. A Proposal for International Monetary Reform. Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 506, Cowles Foundation, Yale University, p. 158-159 [ URL: http://ideas.repec.org/p/cwl/cwldpp/506.html ]

58. ̂ Eichengreen, Barry; Tobin, James; Wyplosz, Charles (1995). "Two Cases for Sand in the Wheels of International Finance". Economic Journal 105 (428): 162–72. doi:10.2307/2235326. JSTOR 2235326.

59. ̂ Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose (May 26, 2008). "Germany in call for ban on oil speculation". The Daily Telegraph (London: The Daily Telegraph). Retrieved 2008-05-28.

60. ^ a b David Cho, and Binyamin Appelbaum (January 22). "Obama's 'Volcker Rule' shifts power away from Geithner". The Washington Post. Retrieved 13 February 2010.

61. ̂ Shields, Michael and Simon Jessopand (December 13, 2009). "Volcker finds British bonus tax "interesting": report". Reuters. Retrieved 23 February 2010.

62. ̂ Tim Harford (February 20, 2010). "If that’s the Robin Hood tax, I’m the sheriff of Nottingham".

63. ̂ Aliber, R.; Chowdhry, B.; Yan, S. (2003). "Some Evidence that a Tobin Tax on Foreign Exchange Transactions Might Increase Volatility". European Finance Review 7 (3): 481–510. doi:10.1023/B:EUFI.0000022143.77321.20.

64. ̂ Kearney, Colm; Patton, Andrew J. (2000). "Multivariate GARCH Modeling of Exchange Rate Volatility Transmission in the European Monetary System". Financial Review 35 (1): 29–48. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6288.2000.tb01405.x. ISSN 1.

65. ̂ Worthington, Andrew; Higgs, Helen (2004). "Transmission of equity returns and volatility in Asian developed and emerging markets: a multivariate GARCH analysis". International Journal of Finance and Economics 9 (1): 71–80. doi:10.1002/ijfe.222.

66. ̂ Valadkhani, Abbas; O'Brien, Martin (2009). "Modelling Australian Stock Market Volatility: A Multivariate GARCH Approach". School of Economics, University of Wollongong, Australia, working paper.

67. ̂ Hanke, Michael; Huber, JüRgen; Kirchler, Michael; Sutter, Matthias (2010). "The economic consequences of a Tobin tax—An experimental analysis". Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 74 (1–2): 58. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2010.02.004.

68. ^ a b c Schulmeister, p.669. ̂ See the italian weekly magazine Vita http://www.vita.it/news/view/385370. ̂ http://www.eumed.net/cursecon/textos/tobin-antiglob.htm71. ̂ Hodgson, Godfrey (13 March 2002). "James Tobin". The Guardian (London).72. ̂ http://www.nber.org/~wbuiter/obit.pdf73. ̂ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/76e13a4e-9725-11de-83c5-00144feabdc0.html?

nclick_check=174. ^ a b c OXERA (May, 2007). "The effectiveness of Keynes-Tobin transaction taxes

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75. ̂ Jackson, P. and A. O’Donnell, 1985. The effects of stamp duty on equity transactions and prices in the UK Stock Exchange. Bank of England Discussion Paper No. 25.

76. ̂ Saporta, Victoria; Kan, Kamhon (1998). "The Effects of Stamp Duty on the Level and Volatility of Equity Prices". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.93656. SSRN 93656.

77. ^ a b Bond, Steve; Hawkins, Mike; Klemm, Alexander (2005). "Stamp Duty on Shares and Its Effect on Share Prices". Public Finance Analysis 61 (3): 275–298. doi:10.1628/001522105774979010.

78. ̂ "HMRC Stamp Taxes Manual". pp. 8, 11.79. ̂ duty in the United Kingdom#Stamp duty reserve tax80. ̂ Bank for International Settlements (September, 2007). "Triennial Central Bank

Survey of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity in April 2007 –

Preliminary global results – Turnover". Bank for International Settlements. Retrieved 2010-01-02.

81. ̂ Schmidt, R. 2007 Currency Transaction Tax: Rate & Revenue Estimates, The North-South Institute

82. ̂ All Party Parliamentary Group for Debt, Aid & Trade83. ̂ Eddy Fougier (Spring 2003). "The French Antiglobalization Movement: a New

French Exception?". Institut Francais des Relationes Internationales.84. ̂ Kwan S. Kim and Seok-Hyeon Kim (December 2003). "The Tobin tax revisited

in the context of global governance on capital markets". The Role of International Institutions in Globalization: The Challenges of Reform (edited by John-ren Chen). Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 30.

85. ̂ Daniel Ben-Ami (March 25, 2002). "Tobin or not Tobin?". spiked.86. ̂ Paul Bernd Spahn (June 16, 1995). "International Financial Flows and

Transactions Taxes: Survey and Options". University of Frankfurt/Main; Paper originally published with the IMF as Working Paper WP/95/60.. Retrieved 2010-01-13.

87. ̂ European Central Bank (2004). Opinion of the European Central Bank (CON/2004/34)

88. ^ a b Andrew Moran (November 23, 2009). "Europe's first President calls for Euro tax, Euro identity". Digital Journal. Retrieved 2010-01-29.

89. ̂ Daniel McConnell (November 22, 2009). "EU president wants to see a new Euro tax". Independent.ie.

90. ̂ Macer Hall and Alison Little (November 19, 2009). "Belgian PM Herman Van Rompuy called clown by sister Christine". Daily Express. Retrieved 2010-01-29.

91. ̂ Ian Traynor (June 29, 2011). "EU calls for 'Tobin' tax in a move to raise direct revenue". The Guardian. Retrieved 2011-06-29.

92. ̂ The G20 is made up of the G7 plus others. The G20 was established in September, 1999, and Canada was part of the original G7. There was no Canadian election between the March 23, 1999 Canadian adoption of the Tobin tax resolution, and the September 1999 formation of the G20, so the government remained the same.

93. ̂ "Sarkozy to press for 'Tobin Tax'". BBC News. 19 September 2009.94. ̂ Tobin tax remains Treasury ambition (December 11, 2009). "Tobin tax remains

Treasury ambition". Financial Times. Retrieved 2009-12-29.95. ^ a b Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew (June 27, 2010). "Banks relieved as G20 backs off

on bank tax". Toronto Star. Retrieved 24 June 2010.96. ̂ David Charter (May 20, 2010). "Merkel leads calls for global financial tax as

markets continue to slide". London: Times Online. Retrieved 24 June 2010.97. ̂ Reuters (June 28, 2010). "EU to study bank transaction tax after G20". Reuters.

Retrieved 24 June 2010.98. ̂ SIN PERMISO - artículos en la WEB99. ̂ Background page, United Nations Millennium Development Goals website,

retrieved 16 June 2009.100. ^ a b Fidel Castro (September 1, 2001). "Key address by Fidel Castro Ruz,

President of the Republic of Cuba at the World Conference against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance". United Nations. Retrieved 29 January 2010.

101. ̂ Cliff Kincaid (October 6, 2009). "Progressives Back Obama Push for Global Tax". Accuracy in Media. Retrieved 2010-01-29.

102. ̂ Ron Paul (March 6, 2006). "International taxes?". The Ron Paul Library. Retrieved 2010-01-26.[dead link]

Further reading

Kaiser, Johannes; Chmura, Thorsten; Pitz, Thomas (July 2007). The Tobin Tax - A Game-Theoretical and an Experimental Approach. Social Science Electronic Publishing.

Patomäki, Heikki (August 2001). Democratising Globalisation: The Leverage of the Tobin Tax. Zed Books. ISBN 978-1856498715.

Haq, Mahbub ul; Kaul, Inge; Grunberg, Isabelle (August 1996). The Tobin Tax: Coping with Financial Volatility. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195111804.

External links

Bank of Portugal report on the defense of the Portuguese Escudo in the European exchange rate mechanism

BBC 7 November 2009 Lukewarm reaction to UK tax plan "Bibliography - Best Sources on Financing Alternatives, and Tobin Taxes"

(includes economists on both sides of the issue of economic feasibility) from website of Tobin Tax Initiative

Currency Transaction Taxes - Library of links to legislation, proposals, reports, articles and archives - from Global Policy Forum

Debating the Tobin Tax , New Rules for Global Finance, 2003 Disarming the markets , editorial by Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde Diplomatique

1997 English version of James Tobin interview on Der Spiegel on Jubilee 2000 web site Federal reserve bank of San Francisco article on the failed attack on the Hong Kong

dollar IMF report (2004) on emerging market currency crises The Guardian editorializes against the Tobin tax

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Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Nacimiento1947

Rio de Janeiro

OcupaciónProfesor de derecho

Político

Roberto Mangabeira Unger ( 1947, Rio de Janeiro) es un teórico social brasileño, político, y profesor de leyes en la Harvard Law School, donde además es el único miembro sudamericano de la facultad.1

Estuvo relacionado por un breve periodo a fines de la década de 1970 y principios de la de 1980 con el grupo Estudios críticos de derecho, a pesar de que expuso diferencias con algunas de las ideas centrales surgidas del mencionado movimiento, en particular en relacion al debate sobre la indeterminación de la teoría legal, y en sus propios escritos llama a la radicalización de tal indeterminación.2 También fue profesor de Barack Obama en Harvard.3

[editar] Libros publicados

1999, La democracia realizada, Ed. Manantial, ISBN 9789875000377 2009, El despertar del individuo, Ed. Fondo de cultura económica, ISBN

9789505578269 2010, La alternativa de la izquierda, Ed. Fondo de cultura económica, ISBN

9789505578382

[editar] Referencias

1. ↑ Barrionuevo.«‘Minister of Ideas’ Tries to Put Brazil's Future in Focus», The New York Times, 02-02-2008.

2. ↑ What Should Legal Analysis Become? p.120, Verso 1996.3. ↑ http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1318241/2262319

[editar] Enlaces externos

Página web de Mangabeira Unger Roberto Unger Websource

Categorías: Nacidos en 1974 | Profesores de Brasil | Filósofos del Derecho | Ministros de Brasil

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Esta página fue modificada por última vez el 20 feb 2011, a las 01:48. El texto está disponible bajo la Licencia Creative Commons Atribución Compartir

Igual 3.0; podrían ser aplicables cláusulas adicionales. Lee lo

Roberto Mangabeira UngerFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Full name Roberto Mangabeira UngerBorn March 24, 1947Era Late 20th Century, Early 21st CenturyMain interests

Social theory · Political theory · Social change · Critical Legal Studies

Notable ideas

False necessity · Formative context · Negative capability · Empowered democracy · Radical pragmatism · Transformative vocation

Influenced by[show]

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (b. March 24, 1947, Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian politician, social theorist, and Harvard Law School faculty. He was a co-founder of the Critical Legal Studies movement, and his subsequent writings on philosophy and social theory have been widely influential. His theories of false necessity, formative context, and negative capability have laid the philosophical and theoretical groundwork for reimagining and remaking social and political order.

Unger has also long been active in politics. He developed opposition parties in Brazil, advised presidential candidates, and served as the Minister of Strategic Affairs under Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He was an advisor to Mexican president Vicente Fox,[1] and also taught Barack Obama at Harvard.[2]

Contents

[hide]

1 Biography o 1.1 Early life o 1.2 Academic career o 1.3 Early political activity o 1.4 Brazilian government appointment o 1.5 Policies in office

2 Philosophy and Thought o 2.1 Legal thought o 2.2 Society as Artifact and False Necessity o 2.3 Formative Context o 2.4 Against the Rationalizing, Humanizing and Escapist Impulses o 2.5 Transformative Vocation o 2.6 Programmatic Thought o 2.7 Political Thought

3 Criticism and Reception o 3.1 Writing style

4 See also 5 Books 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Roberto Mangabeira Unger was born in Rio de Janeiro on March 24, 1947. Although his parents lived in the United States at the time, his father, Artur Unger, suffered a heart attack during a family visit. The family returned to New York after his father recovered. Unger

spent his childhood on Manhattan's Upper East Side and attended the private Allen-Stevenson School.

Both of Unger's parents were accomplished intellectuals. His Dresden-born father, who had arrived in the United States as a child and become a naturalized citizen, was a lawyer. His mother, Edyla Mangabeira, was a Brazilian poet and feminist journalist. They met in the US during the exile of Unger's maternal grandfather, Octávio Mangabeira, who was a liberal politician from the state of Bahia. He was a former professor of astronomy who gained popularity and was elected governor after an inspired public lecture in 1910 on Halley's Comet. He went on to serve as Brazil's minister of foreign affairs in the late 1920s before the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas forced him out of the country. Unger continues to express deep admiration and note the influence of his grandfather.

When he was 11, Unger and his mother moved back to Brazil upon the death of his father. Unger attended Jesuit school where he learned to speak proper Portuguese, and went on to graduate from Rio law school in December 1969. He was admitted in September 1969 to Harvard Law School in anticipation of the successful completion of his exams. Having arrived too late for orientation, Harvard arranged special tutoring for late arrivals, which gave Unger the opportunity to get to know and debate the faculty.

With Brazil under a military dictatorship and Unger unable to return, Harvard invited him to stay for a second year and teach. At 23 years old, Unger began teaching first year contracts to first year students.[3]

[edit] Academic career

In 1976, at 29 years old, Unger became one of the youngest faculty members to receive tenure from the Harvard Law School. In that same year, he also won a coveted Guggenheim Fellowship.[4]

Although appointed to the faculty of law, Unger often taught courses in social theory and philosophy. For his class "Aquinas, Kant, and Hegel" the dean once asked him to append "and the law." Unger recalled that, "I said no because of the code of honor that kept me from saying yes to a figure in authority. … And he just laughed and shrugged his shoulders, and that was that. Basically no Harvard Law School dean since then has ever asked me for anything."[3]

The beginning of Unger's successful and influential career in academia began with his doctoral thesis, which was published as Law in Modern Society in 1976.[5] Taking the likes of Marx and Weber as his conversationalists, he explored the origins of law in modern West and the pressures that were beginning to undermine contemporary legal arrangements. The key questions it asked was why modern societies have legal systems with distinctions between institutions, such as legislature and court, and have a special caste of lawyers who have method of reasoning about social problems? Marx and Weber explained this as an economic necessity for the grounds of capitalist development. Unger argued that it was the result of political and cultural developments specific to Western Europe, and that there is

no real basis of fact on their necessary integration.[6] Similarly, his first book, Knowledge and Politics, published in 1975, took aim at liberal political philosophy, which he argued reduced the world to false antinomies—rules versus values, reason versus desire, etc.

These works led to the co-founding of Critical Legal Studies (CLS) with Duncan Kennedy and Morton Horwitz. The movement stirred up controversy in legal schools across America, as it challenged standard legal scholarship and made radical proposals for legal education. By the early 1980s the movement had hundred of adherents with annual events and conferences. A few years later, the CLS movement touched off a heated internal debate at Harvard, pitting the CLS scholars and the older, more traditional scholars.[7] Despite later distancing himself from the movement when it took a turn to new directions, critics have said that Unger's social theory provides the only credible basis for CLS critique of ruling ideas of legal thought.[8] Unger himself said that CLS's most significant legacy is to treat legal thought "as an inquiry into the possibilities of reconstruction" — a tool for devising better institutions.[3]

Throughout much of the 1980s, Unger worked on his magnum opus, Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory, a three volume work on social change and alternative rivaling that of Marx. The series takes to the hilt the insight of society as an artifact, and smashes the idea of the necessity of certain institutional arrangements. The books are the natural outgrowth of his earlier work on law, extending the notion of the arbitrary social constructions of legal institutions to that of all of human activity. Published in 1987, Politics issues a devastating critique of contemporary social theory and politics, develops a profound and highly original theory of structural and ideological change, gives an alternative account of world history, and then works out the consequences in an alternative vision for the future. By first tearing down the idea that there is a necessary progression from one set of institutional arrangements to another, e.g. feudalism to capitalism, and then building an anti-necessitarian theory of social change of how we get from one set of institutional arrangements to another, these works lay the basis for re-imagining the world and creating a viable alternative to the North Atlantic liberal democracies.

Unger has devoted much of the following decades to further elaborating on the insights developed in Politics through a working out of the political and social alternatives. What Should Legal Analysis Become? (Verso, 1996) developed tools to reimagine the organization of social life. Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative (Verso, 1998) and What Should the Left Propose? (Verso, 2005) put forth alternative institutional proposals.

In 2004, Unger was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

[edit] Early political activity

Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Unger has a long history of political activity in Latin America. With the end of the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 1970s, Unger began to return regularly to work with opposition groups. In 1978 he became the opposition party's chief of staff. He worked for six months in Brasilia uniting progressive liberals and the independent left.[3] In 1979, he drafted the founding manifesto of the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, and a few years later, he returned to Brazil to direct a foundation for needy children in the country's burgeoning urban slums. He even ran an eight-week lightning campaign for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, which he lost by a narrow margin.[7]

In the late 1990s, along with Mexican political scientist Jorge Castañeda Gutman, Unger began to put together an informal network of politicians and business leaders dedicated to redrawing the political map. Dubbed the Latin American Alternative the thrust of the group was to provide viable proposals alongside the critic of neoliberalism. They put forward proposals such as guaranteeing every citizen a "social right" to schooling and a job; breaking up media oligopolies; and holding town meetings to help citizens supervise municipal spending. Although Unger and Castañeda agree with others on the left who insist that the state must preserve a social safety net, they argue that money should be raised not through progressive taxes on income but through a value-added tax on consumption—this tax may increase the cost of living for some poor people, but it has the advantage of forcing the rich to actually pay it.[7]

His has served as an advisor to numerous Latin American political candidates. He helped Leonel Brizola, a two-time governor of Rio de Janeiro run for president twice, but Brizola lost. Later, Unger also advised another presidential candidate, Ciro Gomes, but he lost too.[3] He similarly advised Mexican politician Vicente Fox, first as governor of Guanajuato and then as president.[7]

[edit] Brazilian government appointment

In June 2007, Unger was appointed as head of the newly established Long-term Planning Secretariat—part of the executive office of the president—in Luis Inácio Lula da Silva's second term. The appointment raised eyebrows, for in November 2005, Unger described

Lula's government as "the most corrupt of Brazil's history" and called for his impeachment.[9] Unger was also became responsible for the Institute of Applied Economic Research, or IPEA, a government think tank previously attached to the Planning Ministry.[10] Unger's nomination was reported to cause fear within the IPEA that he would politicize the institution, which has traditionally been seen as apolitical and independent,[11][12][13] and it was even reported that he would disband a long-standing IPEA workgroup that had existed for thirty years.[14]

On May 8, 2008 Lula designated Unger chief minister to coordinate the future of Amazon policy. This led to the resignation of the minister of environment in protest. Unger went on to sign a collaborative agreement with Russia.[3]

On June 26, 2009, President Lula announced Unger would be leaving the government and returning to Harvard, which has a strict two-year limit for leaves of absence.

[edit] Policies in office

Unger's policy proposals in office remained true to his philosophy. He sees the future in small enterprises and supports a rotating capital fund that would function like a government run venture capital fund. He pushed for a rapid expansion of credit to smaller producers and a decentralized network of technical support centers that would help broaden the middle class from below.[15] This is the enactment of Unger's theory of small scale flexible production that would be able to constantly revise and adjust its capacity and product, leaving more room for innovation and growth. Ultimately, this would lead to greater economic and social placticity.

Specifically, Unger called for political solutions that would broaden access to production forces such as information technology, and for states to focus on equipping and monitoring civil society rather than trying to provide social services. He also advocated the weakening of strong executives by making branches of government mutually accountable to one another – the reduction in executive power, he said, would desirably "heighten the temperature of politics".[16]

[edit] Philosophy and Thought

[edit] Legal thought

Unger's early work explored the connection between the law and the arrangement of social institutions. The guiding question of his work that served as a cornerstone for Critical Legal Studies was why modern societies have legal system with distinctions between institutions, such as legislature and court, and have special caste of lawyers possessing a method of reasoning about social problems? An moreso, why did these practices first emerge in Western Europe? Theorists such as Marx and Weber, not to mention the neoliberalist thinkers, had argued that this was a product of economic necessity to secure property rights and the autonomy of the individual. Unger rejected such a determinist explanation and went on to argue in Law and Modern Society that this system of private rights is not based on

necessity, effectiveness, or moral superiority, but rather the result of a particular and contingent political and cultural development.

Unger identified three types of law, which fit into ideal types and satisfied conditions of legitimizing social order, reflecting the nature of social relations, and representing meaningful totality. These three types are customary law (characteristic of tribal societies), bureaucratic law (emergent in agrarian empires), and the liberal legal order of today (which is general, public, positive, and autonomous). It is this third type, the liberal legal order, that must be explained.

Unger argued that in its development, the liberal legal order holds all equal before the law, thus stripping the ruler of any immunity. This lead to a separation of powers and a practice in which rules are autonomous, not moral or religious. Likewise, institutions of the law are autonomous, and that legal reasoning adheres to the established set of rules rather than moral codes. Rather than any necessary connection between this set of legal codes and economic order, this legal thought and arrangements arose in Europe as a result of the indeterminate relations between monarchy, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie. It took the particular generality of form that it did from the long tradition of natural law and universality.[17]

[edit] Society as Artifact and False Necessity

Main article: False necessity

In False Necessity, the first volume of Unger’s Politics, Unger argues that society is a “human artifact rather than the expression of an underlying natural order.”[18] Taking the idea of society as artifact “to the hilt,” Unger posits that society is made and imagined, and consequently, “ours to reinvent.”[19] He critiques ‘necessitarian thought,’ which he describes as the belief that any part of the institutional order is necessary or the result of the ‘natural’ flow of history.

Following from this ‘anti-necessitarian thought’, Unger critiques what he calls the “Typological Fallacy” -- the view that there are a “limited number of types or stages of social organization, all of whose parts combine to form an indivisible package.”[19] Though he praises nineteenth century social theorists for their belief in a ‘deep structure’ in contrast to routine activity, he criticizes them for believing that there is a set number of indivisible forms of structure, like socialism, liberalism, communism.

[edit] Formative Context

Main article: Formative context

Unger is credited with developing the concept of formative contexts— the institutional and imaginative arrangements that shape a society's conflicts and resolutions. Unger describes formative contexts as the structures that limit both the practice and the imaginative possibilities in a socio-political order. Also referred to as order, framework, or structure of

social life, the formative context of a society exerts a major influence on the course of social actions and behaviors but is itself hard to challenge, revise, or even identify in the midst of everyday conflicts and routines. The institutional arrangements structure conflict over government power and capital allocation, whereas the imaginative framework shapes the preconceptions about possible forms of human interaction. An example of a structure of a formative context is the mode of production in Marxism. Whereas other social and political philosophers have taken the historical context as a given, and seen one existing set of institutional arrangements as necessarily giving birth to another set, Unger rejects this naturalization of the world and moves to explain how such contexts are made and reproduced.

[edit] Against the Rationalizing, Humanizing and Escapist Impulses

In The Self Awakened, Unger argues that the social sciences and humanities have succumbed to the sway of three tendencies that stagnate their development and curtail their transformative power: rationalizing, humanizing, and escapist impulses.

Rationalization: Contemporary social scientists rationalize the present social order as a natural state of arrangements, proclaiming the practices and institutions of contemporary societies the victors of a competition with failed alternatives.[20] Rationalizers believe that success confirms superiority and that a cumulative winnowing out of differing social arrangements shows what works.[20] Social scientists – and in particular, economists – explain why the current institutional landscape is the way it is. This is a false premise, however, that the social arrangements are the nature of society and of humanity itself— that there are irresistible forces that determine the pace and direction of change.[21] For Unger, rather, it is we who determine the pace and direction of change, and that “we gain freedom and power by achieving some measure intellectual and practical mastery” over the unnatural contexts in which we find ourselves.[21]

Humanization: In normative political and legal thought, Unger argues, humanization – the conception that “we cannot change society fundamentally” and thus should only “make the best of a world we cannot reconstruct”[22] – rules. Those that aim to humanize the world, Unger explains, find any attempt to change society fundamentally to be “too dangerous, as the adventures of the twentieth century demonstrate.”[22] A common example Unger gives of humanizing political philoophy are “compensatory transfers” by governments which “attenuate the inequalities and insecurities of the market economy by retrospective redistribution.”— instead of reconstructing the foundation that cause such inequalities and insecurities occur in the first place, we only humanize its consequences.[23] As Unger puts it, in instances of policies based on humanization, “renunciation of reconstructive ambition serves sas the starting point for an effort to soften the harshness of the unreconstructed social order.”[23] Unger argues that those political and legal theorists that limit themselves to only humanizing the present order suffer from “the poverty of the imagination of structural change” and the false view that we must choose between humanization (reform at the edges) and revolution (the substitution of one whole system for another).[23] In response, Unger

argues that one need not choose between revolution and humanization because societies are not “indivisible systems, standing or falling together” and thus we can bring about their piecemeal reconstruction, which Unger calls “revolutionary reform.”[21]

Escapism: The humanities, according to Unger, suffer from escapism— the choice to “avoid confronting the practical structure of scoiety” and instead “describe and explore adventures in consciousness” that “bear no manifest relation to the remaking of the social order.”[24] Escapists, as Unger puts it, attempt to offer as fantasy "what society fails to provide as experience," focusing on spiritual adventurism— "the quest for extreme forms of consciousness and experience that deny in the mind the social shackles we fail to break or even to loosen in practice."[24] Unger also describes escapists in the humanities as suffering from "relentless negativity"— giving up on the institutions and practices of society, which are viewed "as the irreconcilable enemies of resistant and transcendent spirit."[24] In response to an over-focus on spiritual adventurism, Unger argues that "desire is relational" – "deepest longings seek expression in connections to other people" – and that "the organization of society and culture sets the terms on which we can hope" to achieve self-affirmation and connection to others— in short, we must tend to the politics surrounding the order of society if we are to tend to our own desires.[24] In response to escapist negativity in the humanities, Unger argues that such negativity is based on the false belief that the relation between any societal structure and our ability to defy such a structure is constant. Rather, Unger argues, "one ordering of society and culture may differ decisively from another in the extent to which it nourishes our powers of reconstruction and creates occasions for their exercise."[25] Put simply: some structures are more inviting to change than others, and therefore one is mistaken to pessimistically believe in a universal maxim that all structures are unchangeable enemies to our transcendent spirits— in fact, Unger asserts, one can construct a societal order that is maximally welcoming to the reconstruction of itself.

Unger argues that such tendencies "disarm the transcending imagination" and "inhibit the transforming will," normalizing our view of society "even when they seem to undermine" our present view. Collectively, Unger argues, the effect of the three tendencies "make the present arrangements and the habitual way of thinking appear natural and event necessary." Only when there is a crisis – which Unger defines as "a problem for which the established structure offers no ready-made solution" – do the social sciences, normative political and legal theory, and the humanities "hit up against the limits of our present ideas and methods." Therefore, it is the task at hand, Unger argues, to have "the ruling forms of social knowledge" free and empower the imagination to "do the work of crisis without crisis."[20]

[edit] Transformative Vocation

Unger argues that there are three ideas about work in society: work as honorable calling, work as instrumental, and work as transformative vocation. Work as honorable calling is the idea that “labor enables the individual…to support the family that provides him with his most important sustaining relations.” Your job provides you with dignity, proves you have

proficiency and experience in some area of society, and indicates that you are neither shifting, dependent nor useless.[26]

The instrumental conception of work is the idea that work “lacks any intrinsic authority” nor “any power of its own to confer dignity or direction on a human life.” [26] Unger argues that to conceive of one’s workaday activity in this manner is to “view the social world as utterly oppressive or alien.” To Unger, those who see work this way are denied any sense of belonging to the world.

The final conception of work – one that Unger argues is turning things inside out – connects self-fulfillment and transformation. In this conception, one’s work is a struggle against the defects or the limits of existing society or available knowledge. Those with such ‘transformative vocations’ find that “self-fulfillment and service to society combine” and “resistance becomes the price of salvation.”[26] Unger argues that the idea of transformative vocation is an insurgent, growing ideas in the world, waging “a largely mute spiritual struggle against the other two notions of work.”[26]

[edit] Programmatic Thought

Unger writes extensively on the topic of how one should think about political change and institutional transformation, referring to his dominant mode of transformational thinking as programmatic thought. Unger criticizes the idea of reformist change, stating that “it is not enough to collect small, practical ideas about what to do next in each realm of social practice and public policy,” and that “ that having “big ideas about the direction in which to move” is important for political transformation.[27] However, unlike most critics of reformist change, Unger also criticizes popular ideas about revolutionary change, arguing that those advocating for full-scale, immediate replacement of one institutional arrangement with another are plagued by three false assumptions:

Typological Fallacy: Unger argues that people wrongly believe that there exists a “closed list of institutional alternatives in history” such as ‘feudalism’ or ‘capitalism’. In place of this belief, Unger proposes that any structure in history is simply the ‘frozen politics’ of that time— not a natural form, but rather the unnatural and specific result of the piecemeal institutional changes, political movements, and cultural reforms (as well as the accidents and coincidences of history) that came before it.

Indivisibility Fallacy: Unger argues that most subscribers to revolutionary Leftism wrongly believe that any institutional deep structure must stand and fall together. In place of this belief, Unger argues that structures can be reformed piecemeal.

Determinism Fallacy: Unger argues that many wrongly believe that “law-like forces, which people cannot control and barely understand, drive forward the historical succession of such institutional systems.”[28] In place of this belief, Unger argues that there is no such thing as a 'natural flow of history'— we can understand human beings and our history without making ourselves the object of a law-giving fate. Social plasticity is realized in its entirety and human freedom is not constrained by any necessary historical trajectory.

Unger argues that the false dichotomy between revolutionary and reformist change results in all proposals for social reconstruction to be seen as either trivial or utopian. If proposals are distant from the established order, people are likely to see them as "interesting but utopian." If they are close to what exists, people are likely to see them as "feasible but trivial."[29]

Unger aims to free would-be social transformers to see possibility as more than "proximity to the present order" by introducing the idea of programmatic thought. To think about social transformation programmatically, one must, according to Unger: (1) mark the direction one wants society to move in; and (2) identify the "first steps by which, from where we are today, we can move in that direction."[30] Thus we can formulate proposals at points along the trajectory, be they relatively close to how things are now or relatively far away. To Unger, this provides a third way between revolution and reform— revolutionary reform, where one has a revolutionary vision, but acts on that vision in a sequence of piecemeal reforms. In various books and lectures, Unger frequently identifies the nuance between contemporary thought about political transformation and his outline of it with the statement that transformative politics is "not about blueprints; it is about pathways. It is not architecture; it is music."[30]

[edit] Political Thought

In The Left Alternative and other works, Unger argues that there are “two main Lefts in the world” -- a recalcitrant Left and a humanizing Left. The recalcitrant Left, as he defines it, seeks to “slow down the march to markets and to globalization.” The humanizing (or ‘reformist’) Left accepts “the market economy in its present form and globalization on its current course as unavailable” and thus attempts to humanize their effects through redistribution through tax-and-transfer policies.[31]

Unger finds the two major orientations of contemporary Leftism inadequate and has frequently articulated the need for, what he calls, a ‘Reconstructive Left’ – one that would insist on “redirecting the course of globalization” by “reorganizing the market economy as a setting for inclusive growth.”[27] In The Left Alternative, as well as in The Future of American Progressivism with Cornel West, he articulates a Leftist program “bent on democratizing the market economy and on deepening democracy.” A Reconstructive Left would ignore contemporary debates on the appropriate size of government, committing instead to re-envisioning the relationship between government and firms in the market economy by “experimenting with the coexistence of different regimes of private and social property.”[27] It would, like the recalcitrant and humanizing Left, be committed to social solidarity, but “would refuse to allow our moral interests in social cohesion…rest solely upon money transfers commanded by the state in the form of compensatory and retrospective redistribution,” as is the case with – according to Unger – federal entitlement programs. Instead, Unger’s Reconstructive Left affirms “the principle that everyone should share, in some way and at some time, responsibility for taking care of other people.”[27]

[edit] Criticism and Reception

In 1987 the Northwestern University Law Review devoted an entire issue to Unger's work, hailing the appearance of his three volume magnus opus Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory as "an important intellectual event." Michael J. Perry, a professor of law at Northwestern, commended Unger for producing a vast work of social theory that dared to combine law, history, politics, and philosophy within a single, sweeping narrative. In the years since, Cornel West, Perry Anderson, Richard Rorty, and numerous other prominent scholars have published detailed—and, very often, admiring—essays on Unger's project.[7]

Early reviewers of Politics questioned Unger's seeming predicament of criticizing a system of thought and its historical tradition without subjecting himself to the same critical gaze. "There is little acknowledgment that he himself is writing in a particular socio-historical context," wrote one reviewer,[32] and another asked, "in what context Unger himself is situated and why that context itself is not offered up to the sledgehammer."[33][34] Such criticism has largely been answered by Unger with his enumeration of the revolutionary orthodoxy and his outline of world history.[35]

Critics also balked at the lack of example or concrete vision of his social and political proposals.[36] As one critic wrote, "it is difficult to imagine what Unger's argument would mean in practice," and that "he does not tell us what to make."[37] Others have pointed out that the lack of imagination of such readers is precisely what is at stake,[38] while Unger has since answered such criticism with works on social, political, and economic alternatives.[39]

[40][41][42]

[edit] Writing style

Unger writes with a mix of social theory excess and everyday bluntness, which has overwhelmed some readers. In a telling anecdote, The London Review of Books returned to Unger a solicited piece on the new agenda for the left saying that it was "insufficiently conversational." Unger responded with a note that read, "even in conversation my style would never be considered conversational."[43]

Reviewers of Unger's books have found his writing style philosophically dense and explanations voluminous.[44] A reviewer in The Political Quarterly called False Necessity too long and too much for a reader to digest, saying that the frequent use of conjunctions, e.g. 'challenge and change', 'contests and compromises', 'ideals and interests', 'institutional and ideological', and 'reimagine and remake,' "engages in alliteration to the detriment of precision."[45] Similarly, another reviewer termed his political thought "a staged exercise in political mystique."[46] Although, Richard Rorty and others lavished praise for such poetics, comparing Unger to Walt Whitman,[47] and Unger's most recent book, The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound, provides more accessible and condensed access to his thought.[35]

[edit] See also

False necessity Formative context Negative capability

Empowered democracy Structure and agency Passions

[edit] Books

Knowledge and Politics, Free Press, 1975. Law in Modern Society, Free Press, 1976. Passion: An Essay on Personality , Free Press, 1986. The Critical Legal Studies Movement, Harvard University Press, 1986. Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory, Cambridge University Press, 1987,

in 3 Vols: o Vol 1 - False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of

Radical Democracy.o Vol 2 - Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task - A Critical Introduction to

Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory.o Vol 3 - Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the

Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success. What Should Legal Analysis Become?, Verso, 1996 Politics: The Central Texts, Theory Against Fate, Verso, 1997, with Cui Zhiyuan. Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative, Verso, 1998. The Future of American Progressivism: An Initiative for Political and Economic

Reform, Beacon, 1998 - with Cornel West What Should the Left Propose?, Verso, 2006. The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound, Harvard, 2007. Free Trade Reimagined: The World Division of Labor and the Method of

Economics, Princeton University Press, 2007. The Left Alternative, Verso, 2009 (2nd edition to What Should the Left Propose?,

Verso, 2006.).

[edit] References

1. ̂ Crabtree, James (2005). "The Future of the left: James Carbtree interview Roberto Unger". Renewal 13 (2/3): 173.

2. ̂ "Latin America optimistic about Obama". TVNZ. November 6, 2008.3. ^ a b c d e f Romano, Carlin (June 6 2008). "Harvard Law's Roberto Unger takes on

the future of Brazil". Chronical of Higher Eduction 54 (39): B6.4. ̂ "Guggenheim Gives Fellowships for '76 Unger Gets Tenure, Too". The Harvard

Crimson. April 5, 1976. Retrieved 31 August 2011.5. ̂ Unger, Robero Mangabeira (1976). Law in modern society: toward a criticism of

social theory. New York: Free Press.6. ̂ For a good discussion of Unger's early work on law see Collins, Hugh (1987).

"Roberto Unger and the Critical Legal Studies Movement". Journal of Law and Society 14.

7. ^ a b c d e Press, Eyal (March 1999). "The Passion of Roberto Unger". Lingua Franca. Retrieved 4 July 2011.

8. ̂ Collins, Hugh (1987). "Roberto Unger and the Critical Legal Studies Movement". Journal of Law and Society 14: 388.

9. ̂ Marra, Ana Paula. Mangabeira Unger assume secretaria e diz que Lula foi magnânimo ao convidá-lo para o cargo. Agência Brasil. June 19, 2007. Retrieved on September 8, 2007.(Portuguese)

10. ̂ Marra, Ana Paula. Decreto transfere Ipea para Secretaria de Planejamento de Longo Prazo. Agência Brasil. June 19, 2007. Retrieved on September 8, 2007.

11. ̂ Franco, Ilimar. Temor ronda o Ipea após indicação de Mangabeira. O Globo. April 28, 2007. Retrieved September 8, 2007.(Portuguese)

12. ̂ Guerreiro, Gabriela.Líderes do PRB minimizam críticas de Mangabeira Unger a Lula. Folha de S. Paulo. April 24, 2007. Retrieved on September 8, 2007

13. ̂ A ameaça ao Ipea. O Estado de São Paulo. May 4, 2007. Retrieved September 8, 2007.

14. ̂ de Souza, Josias. Mangabeira Unger faz ‘operação limpeza’ no Ipea. Folha de S. Paulo. September 7, 2007. Retrieved September 8, 2007.

15. ̂ Barrionuevo, Alexei (February 2, 2008). "‘Minister of Ideas’ Tries to Put Brazil’s Future in Focus". New York Times.

16. ̂ Szabla, Chris (October 4, 2009). "After rocky but influential tenure, Brazil's "Minister of Ideas" returns to HLS". Harvard Law Record.

17. ̂ Unger, Robero Mangabeira (1976). Law in modern society: toward a criticism of social theory. New York: Free Press. See also, Collins, Hugh (1987). "Roberto Unger and the Critical Legal Studies Movement". Journal of Law and Society 14.

18. ̂ Unger. "False Necessity". Social Theory: It's Situation and It's Task. Retrieved 15 May 2011.

19. ^ a b Unger, Roberto. "Social Theory: It's Situation and It's Task". Retrieved 15 May 2011.

20. ^ a b c Unger, Roberto Mangabeira (2006). The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. pp. 112. ISBN 978-0-674-02354-3.

21. ^ a b c Unger, Roberto Mangabeira (2006). The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. pp. 114. ISBN 978-0-674-02354-3.

22. ^ a b Unger, Roberto Mangabeira (2006). The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. pp. 118. ISBN 978-0-674-02354-3.

23. ^ a b c Unger, Roberto Mangabeira (2006). The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. pp. 119. ISBN 978-0-674-02354-3.

24. ^ a b c d Unger, Roberto Mangabeira (2006). The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. pp. 123. ISBN 978-0-674-02354-3.

25. ̂ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira (2006). The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. pp. 124. ISBN 978-0-674-02354-3.

26. ^ a b c d Unger, Roberto. [ttp://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/unger/english/pdfs/social_theory3.pdf "Social Theory: It's Situation and It's Task"]. Retrieved 15 May 2011.

27. ^ a b c d Unger, Roberto (2005). The Left Alternative. Verso. pp. ix. ISBN 978-1-84467-370-4.

28. ̂ Unger, Roberto (2005). The Left Alternative. Verso. pp. xi. ISBN 978-1-84467-370-4.

29. ̂ Unger, Roberto (2005). The Left Alternative. Verso. pp. xx. ISBN 978-1-84467-370-4.

30. ^ a b Unger, Roberto (2005). The Left Alternative. Verso. pp. xxi. ISBN 978-1-84467-370-4.

31. ̂ Unger, Roberto (2005). The Left Alternative. Verso. pp. vii. ISBN 978-1-84467-370-4.

32. ̂ Hutchinson, Allan C. “Review: A Poetic Champion Composes: Unger (Not) on Ecology and Women.” The University of Toronto Law Journal 40, no. 2 (April 1, 1990): 279.

33. ̂ Wilder, Joseph C. “Review.” The American Political Science Review 83, no. 2 (June 1, 1989): 623.

34. ̂ See also Yack, Bernard. “Review: Toward a Free Marketplace of Social Institutions: Roberto Unger’s ‘Super-Liberal’ Theory of Emancipation.” Harvard Law Review 101, no. 8 (June 1, 1988): 1970.

35. ^ a b Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. The self awakened: pragmatism unbound. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2007.

36. ̂ Yack, Bernard. “Review: Toward a Free Marketplace of Social Institutions: Roberto Unger’s ‘Super-Liberal’ Theory of Emancipation.” Harvard Law Review 101, no. 8 (June 1, 1988): 1969.

37. ̂ Shapiro, Ian. “Review: Constructing Politics.” Political Theory 17, no. 3 (1989): 481, 482.

38. ̂ Rorty, Richard. “Unger, Castoriadis, and the Romance of a National Future.” Northwestern University Law Review 82 (1988 1987).

39. ̂ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. Democracy realized: the progressive alternative. London: Verso, 1998

40. ̂ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. Free trade reimagined: the world division of labor and the method of economics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007

41. ̂ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. The future of American progressivism: an initiative for political and economic reform. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998

42. ̂ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. The left alternative. London: Verso, 2009.43. ̂ Crabtree, James. “The Future of the left: James Carbtree interview Roberto

Unger.” Renewal 13, no. 2/3 (2005), 173.44. ̂ See Yack, Bernard. “Review: Toward a Free Marketplace of Social Institutions:

Roberto Unger’s ‘Super-Liberal’ Theory of Emancipation.” Harvard Law Review 101, no. 8 (June 1, 1988): 1964.

45. ̂ Ali, Shahrar (July 27, 2004). "Review". The Political Quarterly. Retrieved 11 July 2011.

46. ̂ Fleischmann, Steven. “Review: The Plastic Politics of Abstraction.” Contemporary Sociology 17, no. 4 (July 1, 1988): 448.

47. ̂ Rorty, Richard. “Unger, Castoriadis, and the Romance of a National Future.” Northwestern University Law Review 82 (1988 1987). See also Allan C. Hutchinson, “Review: A Poetic Champion Composes: Unger (Not) on Ecology and

Women,” The University of Toronto Law Journal 40, no. 2 (April 1, 1990): 271-295.

[edit] External links

Roberto Unger's Homepage Roberto Unger Websource

Biographical Articles about Roberto Unger:

Guggenheim Gives Fellowships for '76: Unger Gets Tenure, Too (The Harvard Crimson April 5, 1976)

Guggenheim Fellows for 1976 (Guggenheim Foundation Website) "The Passion of Roberto Unger" , Eyal Press, (Lingua Franca, March 1999) Carlos Castilho, "Brazil's Consigliere: Unger Leaves Lectern to Stand Behind the

Throne." (World Paper, April 2000) Simon Romero, "Destination: São Paulo" (Metropolis, October 2000) This article is

about São Paulo, Brazil, but it has a lengthy discussion of Unger's political activism there and many quotes from Unger.

Meltzer Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences (HLS News May 13, 2004)

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