I'd love for someone to tell my why speculation is bad.
I sense a thread derail coming, but yeah I don't see why speculation is so bad.
Apparently that's because both of you aren't aware of how much of it is going on, at least I hope that is the answer. Before I write a 10 page history on this I'll test the waters: do you think that there is any amount of speculation that would be 'too much' or is it fine to have 50 times GDP of a country flowing in and out of that countries capital markets annually?
No, I don't think there is the concept of "too much". Maybe you can explain why. Even just a short summary.
I don't know if the Tobin tax is a good idea but the problem it addresses is huge.
When you try to buy or sell securities, hypertrading is a way that allows the big players to find the maximum price you are willing to pay. They do it by placing and cancelling sales 1000s of times per second when a new buy order appears. The effect is that us peons always pay close to the max we are willing to pay while the Goldman Sachs type institutions pocket the difference between that max and the price the security could be acquired at.
Its thought that transaction tax to eliminate those trades would be helpful. If it provided a buffer for the "too big to fail" banks, so much the better.
Personally I'd worry that the exchange would simply take place somewhere else. I don't know if the tax would work.
So the problem is someone else makes money? Oh noes, how horrible. I pay what I am willing to pay, how horrible.