This holiday season, for too many Americans, It's Not Such a Wonderful Life. Reckless Wall Street gambling collapsed the economy. The big bankers, like Mr. Potter, got theirs -- an unbelievable $3 trillion in government help! It worked so well that Wall Street will pay out some $140 billion in bonuses this year.
But what about George Bailey and the rest of us? Where is the help for the 16 million Americans who are now out of work? The millions of unemployed facing foreclosure? The millions more teetering on the brink of personal bankruptcy?
The banks were aided on the condition that they would free up credit, modify mortgages and help put America back to work. They have not kept the bargain. Tell Congress, it is time to take some of the big bailout bucks back and pass a small transaction tax on stock market speculation to pay for a new job creation. Leftover bailout funds should also be put to work creating jobs.
Urge President Obama to "Repo the Dough" by taxing speculation and putting Wall Street to work rebuilding Main Street!
It's Not Such a Wonderful Life this holiday season. With 16 million Americans out of work and millions facing foreclosure, we need to create 300,000 jobs a month to climb out of this hole. To help you with this tremendous task, we want you to consider a small tax on destructive stock market speculation to help pay for new jobs initiatives.
[Your comment will be inserted here]
Just like that perfect sweater, a financial transactions tax would look just great on those Wall Street bankers and financiers. A modest tax, which would be too small for normal investors to even notice, could easily raise more than $100 billion a year. That's real money even in the land of multi-billion dollar bailouts and eye-popping banker bonuses.
When we withdraw $30 or $40 of our own money from an ATM machine, we are charged a fee of about 9%. But we aren't as greedy as the big banks. We only want to charge them a tiny fraction of this amount, 0.25% on stock market trades.
America is broke, but average Americans need help more than ever before. A tax on Wall Street speculation, like the one introduced by Senator Harkin and Rep. De Fazio, could be an important source of funds for the type of new jobs initiatives you are discussing.
