Why Bernie's transaction tax to fund free education for our kids is a GOOD idea. [View all]

[PatrickforO]

WARNING: We'll be getting a bit wonky here...and if you're a big stocks & bonds person forgive me for being basic.

Here's the real deal about the transaction tax:

Since the deregulation of Wall Street, investment houses, banks and insurance companies can now all 'play' the market, meaning they can speculate using other people's money on things like derivative bundles, which are very risky. So, there are two things about this tax that actually are a good idea:

First, think of all the people you might listen to for investment advice. They will generally tell you to 'buy and hold' but the real money is made once schmucks like us lay down their money and buy shares. Because the big house holding our shares for us can make money from trading them every day and we'll never know the difference.

OK, now that we've established that, how do they do it? Well, the big houses all have 'bots. These 'bots are basically computer programs that buy and sell securities (stocks) and commodity futures so the investment house can realize an incremental profit from arbitrage. Let me explain. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for instance, is located on - you guessed it - Wall Street. The big houses have 'seats' on this exchange (and others). So each big house sends traders to the floor of the exchange and they basically yell at each other all day making trades. Seriously. I've seen this on video and it looks like the most hellish job that ever was...utterly without any existential meaning...

Anyway, for each transaction there is an 'ask' price and a 'sell' price. Usually they are very close, in the tenths of a penny difference. But when shares in a company are moving down or up, there's a real opportunity, if they do it really fast, to make a narrow profit on the difference between 'ask' and 'sell' prices. This is called arbitrage. For instance if a company bought 100,000 shares of X at $10.00 a minute ago, but now the 'sell' price is $10.01, the 'bot will signal a 'sell' order and in nanoseconds the trade will be complete - 100,000 shares of X bought a minute ago at $10, and sold just now at $10.01 per share for an arbitrage profit on that one trade of $1,000.

Thousands of these transactions take place per minute, and as I say, schmucks like us don't have any clue. All we did was buy the stocks, and then years later when we sell them we will have to pay a 'capital gain' tax on the difference in what we paid way back when (the basis) and what we sold it for. But all this time the company where we have our trading account has made thousands of dollars in profit trading up and down the whole time. In fact, the 'volume' (total number of trades) on the exchange is inflated because of these 'bots, and the market (value of stocks) can actually be artificially changed by all these trades. So, instead of the market moving on the value the companies behind the stocks re actually creating, it moves based on a bunch of greedy traders trying to suck the uttermost drop of blood.

Scummy, right? I mean, there's just something that feels dirty about that - almost like a sucker eating scum from the bottom of a pond just to eke out that final few pennies of profit.

Bernie's tax wouldn't affect that this happens - we'd just be collecting a tiny tax on each transaction. This is the money he wants to use to pay for free college at state schools to the bachelor's level. Great for our kids and only a microscopic reduction in profit for companies that are already like giant bloated mosquitoes that are ready to explode from sucking too much blood.

OK....now here's the second reason, the one that actually affects pension funds:

Second, as if the above isn't enough, the big exchanges gamble even MORE aggressively with our money without us ever knowing. Their method of choice is the derivative bundle. Basically, a derivative is a 'contract that derives its value from the performance of an underlying entity. This underlying entity can be an asset, index, or interest rate, and is often called the "underlying."'

So, how does this egregious scum sucking look on the ground? Let's take the example above. Because hey, $1,000 every few seconds isn't anything right? Just chump change for these greed heads. What if the quantitative analysts for the big trading house decide stock for company X is a winner long term.

They can make money off this two ways:

1. They can bundle it as a derivative package with other 'winners' and sell it to other investors at a price that takes into account the estimated 'win' amount. So the investors put up money that belongs to other people, usually, and buy this bet that these stocks as a group are all going to go up Z amount. Since they bought it for Z-Y, they stand to make Y profit on the bundle. And, if the stock does BETTER than Z then they will make even more. Now the funny thing about derivatives is that that's all they are, just bets. You aren't buying anything really, you're just putting money into a big slot machine.

Because if the stock doesn't go up enough to cover your cost, then the derivative owner is upside down. This is what happened to Lehman Brothers in 2008, basically.

So how does this affect pensions? Well the company that holds your pension may have 'enjoyed' this nice deregulation, so now they can REALLY gamble...with your money. Now, and here's the nuance...it would be OK if they sold derivatives to other investors based on what they think will happen with YOUR money because that way you wouldn't lose your money even of those bets went bad.

But.......................oh SHIT!

What if the company that holds your pension mortgages the value of the pension and uses your money to buy derivatives from someone else???

Oh, oh.

And then, what if those bets go south? Well, that company has to use other assets to cover the value of your pension, and if they can't then YOU lose YOUR money. Bernie's tax on these transactions MIGHT prevent the big houses that make these arbitrage trades every nanosecond from moving the market artificially quite so much. And it certainly would stop most of this kind of arbitrage trading with bundled derivatives.

See, this is why Bernie is so RIGHT. He wants to reinstate Glass-Steagall, which basically says, hey, if you're a commercial bank then you can only do X. If you're an investment bank then you can only do Y. If you are an insurance company, you can only do Z. This is why Wall Street is so fucked up and immoral...well, one reason.

The other reason is the Fed. See, people think the Fed is 'quasi' governmental. Bullshit. The Fed is primarily owned by two big banks: JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. So this national debt? It's money we owe to ourselves. So why are we paying interest on that money to Wall Street?

What pisses me off, just burns me is that NONE of these slimeballs like Jamie Diamon have gone to trial let alone jail for their fucked up betting that ruined so many lives.

Last, cause this was a long post, let me say that if you are a working American, you should be for Bernie, period, because our interests have NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING in common with those of the greed heads on Wall Street.