Flashback: UN and IMF Push for Global Financial Transaction Tax and Carbon Tax to Finance World Government

Globalists Push World Transaction Tax At UN Summit

Final move for world government and destruction of middle class begins

September 19, 2010

Prison Planet.com - Globalists representing 60 nations will meet at the UN this coming week to push a tax on world financial transactions in the name of solving poverty and climate change, formally launching a massive program to bankrupt the middle class and enrich the coffers of global government.

“Spearheaded by European Union countries, the so-called “innovative financing” proposal envisages a tax of 0.005 percent (five cents per $1,000), which experts estimate could produce more than $30 billion a year worldwide for priority causes,” reports CNS News.

As Ira Stoll, editor of FutureCapitalism.com, points out, new taxes always start off small so as to not be resisted by the people forced to pay them, and are then always gradually increased.

“When people suggest taxes, they always start out ‘small,” said Stoll.

“But once the door is opened to the idea of ‘global taxes,’ you can bet they won’t end small. Never mind all the issues about whether development aid actually helps poor countries or just winds up empowering corrupt local dictators and their cronies.”

The call for a global transaction tax arrives in the aftermath of a leaked UN blueprint which outlined how elitists plan to re-brand global warming in an effort to dismantle the middle class by instituting a “global redistribution of wealth” via carbon taxes.

Flashback: Robin Hood Tobin Tax is an Transaction-Tax Scam

Robin Hood Tax: Occupy Movement Now Marching Straight into the Globalist Trap

The Robin Hood Tax is an identical transaction-tax scam to the one proposed by globalists at the 2009 UN COP15 Climate Summit in Copenhagen

October 25, 2011

Patrick Henningsen, Infowars.com - It was inevitable that a movement which has struggled to agree on a manifesto, in the end, would do the bidding of the very elite globalist powers that they are demonstrating against to begin with.

Instead of achieving freedom from Central Bank debt enslavement, naive Occupiers appear to have taken the bait, pulling the mob towards endorsing a global taxation system, and one to be administered… by a brand new global government body.

As the Occupy Movement sets its sights on the upcoming G20 Summit in France on November 3-4, its globalist handlers behind the scenes have succeeded in carefully directing its crowds towards the Holy Grail of all socialist super-states — the celebrity supported, trendy “Robin Hood Tax”, also known as a Tobin Tax, a financial transaction tax levied on all transactions involving shares, bonds and derivatives.

It’s likely that such a blanket tax will eventually end up on the end of things like cash withdrawals and the like.

They claim that the resulting funds, counted in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year, would go toward popular Bono-led liberal heart-string fantasy causes like ‘reducing poverty in the third world’, social programs and— surprise, surprise — “combating climate change” and perhaps even saving polar bears — a move that would surely please desperate men like Al Gore (but a complete waste of money seeing that man-made global warming has already been thoroughly discredited).

The rallying cry for this globalist wet dream is coming directly from the supposed brain-child of the Occupy Movement, the globalist foundation-funded organization, Ad Busters, quietly shepherding its flock towards one of the biggest revenue spinning and control scams ever conceived.

Reuters reported yesterday:

“Canada-based Adbusters wants the Occupy Wall Street protest movement against economic inequality to take to the streets to call for a 1 percent tax on such deals ahead of a November 3-4 summit of the Group of 20 leading economies in France.

“Let’s send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3 trillion easy money that’s sloshing around the global casino each day — enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world,” the activist group said on its website, www.adbusters.org.

Adbusters put out the initial call for Occupy Wall Street and since protesters set up camp in a park in New York City’s financial district on September 17, they have inspired solidarity demonstrations and so-called occupations around the world.”

In many ways, the Robin Hood Tax is an identical transaction-tax scam to the one proposed by globalists at the 2009 UN COP15 Climate Summit in Copenhagen, where a number of new taxes on financial transactions and new carbon taxes would be put into a giant “slush fund” to be handled by none other than the World Bank.

Ultimately, any Robin Hood Tax will most likely end up in a giant fund to “ensure that banks are adequately capitalized”, and one which will be used to bailout, or insure big bank losses and trillions in gambling derivative bets gone bad.

In reality, a Robin Hood Tax does just the opposite of what its name represents. Rather than stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, it is designed to steal more money through taxation from working people — money which will end up directly in the hands of institutions like the US Federal Reserve and its cartel of Wall Street banks.

Obama Calls for Global Tax on All Financial Transactions

Obama Advisor’s Call for Global Tax Part of UN Agenda for Transfer of Wealth

Obama himself introduced global tax bill in 2007 under UN auspices

February 13, 2012

Infowars.com - Director of the White House’s national economic council Gary Sperling’s announcement that a plan for a “global minimum tax” is in the works continues the efforts of Barack Obama himself to oversee a massive transfer of wealth under the auspices of the UN.

The call also echoes similar rhetoric out of the United Nations which recently announced an agenda to impose a world tax on all financial transactions to “help the poor”.

“We need a global minimum tax so that people have the assurance that nobody is escaping doing their fair share as part of a race to the bottom or having our tax code actually subsidized and facilitate people moving their funds to tax havens,” Sperling said today at an official meeting.

He added that more details about the proposal would be forthcoming before the end of the month.

The fact that President Barack Obama’s economic advisors are now pushing a global tax should not be a surprise given the fact that Obama himself introduced a bill when he was in the Senate, the Global Poverty Act of 2007, which would have committed 0.7% of America’s gross national product, or an additional $845 billion over 13 years in addition to existing foreign aid expenditures, for the purposes of “reducing global poverty.”

Obama’s bill was introduced with the aim of satisfying the “[U.N.] Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.”

The United Nations has repeatedly tried but failed to piggy-back a global tax onto the back of climate change deals at successive summits in Copenhagen, Cancun and most recently in Durban.

The UN has also invoked the plight of the world’s poor in its bid to establish a system of global taxation.

The Commission on Social Development met earlier this month at UN headquarters in New York to advance the agenda for a world tax imposed on all financial transactions to fund a global model of social services that will provide “needy people” with a basic income, free healthcare, education and housing.

According to the report, the new global tax is designed to be a progressive scale, with higher earners paying more to help provide “all needy people with a basic income, healthcare, education and housing.”

The Obama administration’s plans for a global tax are in complete synergy with the United Nations agenda to achieve the same objective, which as a chilling 2010 UN blueprint made clear, revolved around a $45 trillion transfer of wealth from richer countries as part of a process that would enable the United Nations to build a structure of global governance in pursuit of a “Green World Order,” while lowering living standards in the west.

The timeline by which this goal had to be accomplished was June 2012, the date of the UN’s World Summit on Sustainable Development in Rio, which will mark the 20th anniversary since the notorious “Earth Summit” held in the same city.

Cell Phone Taxes Are Three Times Higher Than Sales Taxes

Consumers currently pay about $92 a year on average, or 16.3% of their total bill (compared to 7.4% for other goods and services), in local, state and federal taxes as part of their cellphone plan -- the highest amount ever. That's up from a 14.1% tax rate in 2006. Many states and local municipalities are facing budget shortfalls and looking for new ways to raise revenue. Taxes vary by location, but residents in at least five states, including Florida, Illinois and Washington, get hit with rates that account for more than 20% of their wireless bill. Some municipalities raised taxes by 3% to a whopping 75%. In Baltimore, for example, taxes and fees account for 27% of the average customer's wireless bill, while in New York they account for about 20%. [Source]

Federal Universal Service Charge: Congress has mandated that all telephone companies providing interstate service must contribute to the USF. Although not required to do so by the government, many telephone carriers choose to pass their contribution costs on to their customers in the form of a line item, often called the “Federal Universal Service Fee” or “Universal Connectivity Fee.” [Source]

Consumer Cell Phone Taxes Are Three Times Higher Than Sales Taxes

May 13, 2011

American Consumer Institute - As state budget woes grow and politically viable solutions shrink, state legislators often turn to hidden taxes and fees for extra revenue. Nowhere is this as evident as it is in on your cell phone bill, especially if you live in Nebraska (18.64%), Washington (17.95%), New York (17.78%), or any of the other 23 states that now impose wireless taxes of greater than 10%.

The average wireless consumer faces taxes and fees amounting to more than 16% of their bill. These taxes are considered by most experts to be regressive information taxes, disproportionately affecting those in the greatest need.

The out of control taxes on cell phone bills more than double the average tax on other taxable goods and services.

The Wireless Tax Fairness Act of 2011 – spearheaded by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) – promises a five-year “catch your breath” moratorium on state and local wireless taxation. The intent is to freeze the out-of-control taxation long enough to wait out the current fiscal crisis, taking away the crutch some states are using to fill their budget holes. The bill is the third such attempt in five years, but also marks the most robust and popular version. In her remarks, Rep. Lofgren said:

“By freezing wireless taxes and fees, we hope to spur additional consumer driven development in wireless broadband and to increase access to advanced wireless networks. This legislation is about stabilizing the wireless and giving consumers the opportunity to choose services based on the merits and not on the changing rate of taxation.”

The state taxes in questions come in addition to (and often mirror) federal programs like the Universal Service Fund, which taxes all consumers cell phone bills and spends the money to increase access to the poor and rural areas. The problem is that the Universal Service Fund (and daughter programs in the states) loses in bureaucracy far more than it could gain in providing access.

One study found that money spent from the federal Universal Service Fund saw less than 41 cents of every dollar actually used in building infrastructure, its intended use. The remaining 59 cents of every dollar were lost in bureaucracy and administrative costs.

A wireless association executive, CTIA’s Steve Largent, says that increased taxes are incomprehensible in a time of economic downturn:

“In light of today’s challenging economic conditions it is hard to understand why the average wireless consumer is being charged more than 16 percent in taxes and fees when other taxable goods and services are only 7.4 percent.”

As Largent goes on to illustrate, increased wireless taxes seem to completely contradict the espoused goals of policymakers looking to expand broadband Internet access to all Americans.

Wireless taxes are especially troublesome because of not only what they limit, but whom they limit it. As wireless Internet grows in popularity, it becomes for many the only portal to the Internet. Recent studies show that minorities and the impoverished are far more likely to depend on wireless service as both their primary method of communication and their primary method of Internet access.

It’s rare to see Washington politicians saving us from overreaching state governments, but this seems to be the case here. If Congress really wanted to get serious about spurring innovation, the adoption of wireless services and expand Internet access to everyone, they might consider lowering federal cell phone taxes while they’re at it. One miracle at a time.

The Wireless Tax Fairness Act is a fine start, but as Scott Mackey points out, much of the damage has already been done. Forty-seven states already levy taxes and fees on wireless customers greater than the average good or service.

A moratorium on taxes gives consumers time to catch their collective breath, but it’s up to legislators to look at ways to cut these regressive taxes back down to size. Doing so will undoubtedly spur innovation in the fastest-growing sector of the economy and begin to make high-speed Internet accessible to everyone.

Wireless Phone Taxes Must Go

July 1, 2011

Daily Caller - ...Economists of all political persuasions typically recommend adherence to the principle of tax neutrality, which holds that taxes should treat economic activities equally in order to have similar effects across consumers. In other words, taxes should be broadly applied at a low rate rather than applied to just a handful of goods at a high rate.

And make no mistake: cell phones are taxed at an inordinately high rate. The federal government charges a 5.5 percent fee on the voice portion of your cell phone bill to support the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes phone service to low-income and rural households as well as schools and libraries. State and local governments tack on additional fees, averaging almost ten percent nationwide, ranging from a low of just 1.84 percent in Oregon to a staggering 18.64 percent in Nebraska.

As a result, cell phone service is taxed at an average combined rate of 15.4 percent, according to calculations by economist Scott Mackey. Compare this with sales taxes, which average just 6.83 percent nationally (in part because the federal government collects no sales tax). This rate is simply economically unjustifiable.

These high taxes disproportionately affect lower-income households. When policymakers enacted cell phone taxes, wireless telephony was seen as the exclusive domain of the wealthy and privileged — think of the stereotypical 1980s Wall Street executive holding a brick-sized cell phone to his cheek.

This is obviously no longer the case. In the last decade, the number of cell phones in the United States has almost tripled. By 2009, a quarter of American households had only cell phones and no land lines. And poor households are almost twice as likely as non-poor households to only have cell phones.

Moreover, Congress has made expanding high-speed Internet access a policy priority. But because cell phones increasingly also offer Internet access, taxing wireless telephony runs counter to that policy.

According to a 2010 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 40 percent of American cell phone users report using their cell phones to go online. Eighteen percent of African-American respondents and 16 percent of English-speaking Hispanic respondents said their cell phones were their only means of accessing the Internet.

Virtually everyone agrees that increasing access to the Internet — whether through cables to your desktop or wireless signals to your pocket — is a good thing. But taxing wireless phone service will have the opposite effect.

If states are serious about improving their tax codes, they would do well to consider scrapping excise taxes on cell phone service and to avoid adding any new taxes to wireless Internet or data services.

UN Wants a World Tax Imposed on All Financial Transactions to Fund a 'Social Justice' Plan

UN Wants World Tax to ‘Help The Poor’

February 3, 2012

Infowars.com - The United Nations wants a world tax imposed on all financial transactions to fund a global model of social services that will provide “needy people” with a basic income, free healthcare, education and housing.

The drive is part of the UN’s mission to create a “social protection floor” under the auspices of the Commission on Social Development, which began this week in New York. The SPF will become the UN’s primary focus from 2015 onwards when the Millennium Development Goals project concludes.

“The money to fund these services may come from a new world tax,” reports the Deseret News, quoting Jens Wandel, Deputy Director of the United Nations Development Program, who said that a long term funding plan for the project would center around “a minimal financial transaction tax (of .005 percent). This will create $40 billion in revenue.”

“No one should live below a certain income level,” stated Milos Koterec, President of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. “Everyone should be able to access at least basic health services, primary education, housing, water, sanitation and other essential services.”

According to the report, the new global tax is designed to be a progressive scale, with higher earners paying more to help provide “all needy people with a basic income, healthcare, education and housing.”

This represents the UN’s latest attempt to fleece western taxpayers under the utopian rhetoric of global socialism.

While invoking the plight of the world’s poor as a justification to create a slush fund under its control, the UN is also invoking the discredited pseudo-science of man-made global warming in an effort to shake down the developed world through the imposition of carbon taxes.

A new UN report entitled “Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing,” calls for punishing economies deemed not “sustainable” by establishing, “natural resource and externality pricing instruments, including carbon pricing, through mechanisms such as taxation, regulation or emissions trading systems, by 2020.”

A 2010 UN blueprint for putting the organization back at the forefront of global governance alarmingly revealed the agenda to re-brand global warming as “overpopulation” as a means of dismantling the middle classes while using “global redistribution of wealth” and increased immigration to reinvigorate the pursuit of a one world government.

The United Nations also called for using the pretext of environmental threats to concentrate power and wealth into its hands during the recent UN Climate Summit in Durban, a plan under which the west would be mandated to respect “the rights of Mother Earth” by paying a “climate debt” which would act as a slush fund for bankrolling an all-powerful world government.

Even if one entertains the viability of countries being forced by the UN to send even more money overseas, trusting the United Nations to oversee such a massive transfer of wealth would be somewhat naive given the fact that the organization is inherently corrupt, as the oil for food scandal illustrated.

The UN also has a habit of using money designated for relief projects to enrich its own coffers, including the $732.4 million budget for earthquake-shattered Haiti, two thirds of which was spent on “the salary, perks and upkeep of its own personnel, not residents of the devastated island.”

Transaction Tax for the European Union

Italy and Germany Want Transaction Tax to be for Whole of EU

January 12, 2012

The Independent - The leaders of Italy and Germany dealt a blow to France's hopes for a financial transaction tax yesterday, indicating they could only support it if it applied to the whole European Union and not just the eurozone.

Italy's prime Minister Mario Monti said his government was more open to the idea in principle, abandoning Italy's blanket opposition in the past, but said the levy should apply across the EU.

"We are willing to back this initiative on an EU level. The ideal situation would be to have it globally. It could make sense if it were among all 27 EU countries. I'm not sure if it makes sense only at eurozone level," he said in Berlin at a press conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Mrs Merkel said that while she and her party would back a tax on a eurozone level, Germany could not support that since her coalition partners will only back it on a EU-wide basis. Among the 10 EU countries outside the eurozone, Britain and Sweden are against the tax, fearing it would harm their financial sectors. This concern is shared by some eurozone nations such as Ireland.

David Cameron has said the UK could only agree to the tax if it were accepted globally.

Flashback: Globalists Plan to Dismantle the Middle Class With a UN Tax

Globalists Plan to Dismantle Middle Class With UN Tax

September 19, 2010

Infowars.com - Globalists representing 60 nations will meet at the UN this coming week to push a tax on world financial transactions in the name of solving poverty and climate change, formally launching a massive program to bankrupt the middle class and enrich the coffers of global government.

“Spearheaded by European Union countries, the so-called “innovative financing” proposal envisages a tax of 0.005 percent (five cents per $1,000), which experts estimate could produce more than $30 billion a year worldwide for priority causes,” reports CNS News.

As Ira Stoll, editor of FutureCapitalism.com, points out, new taxes always start off small so as to not be resisted by the people forced to pay them, and are then always gradually increased.

“When people suggest taxes, they always start out ‘small,” said Stoll.

“But once the door is opened to the idea of ‘global taxes,’ you can bet they won’t end small. Never mind all the issues about whether development aid actually helps poor countries or just winds up empowering corrupt local dictators and their cronies.”

The call for a global transaction tax arrives in the aftermath of a leaked UN blueprint which outlined how elitists plan to re-brand global warming in an effort to dismantle the middle class by instituting a “global redistribution of wealth” via carbon taxes.

The aim is to “limit and redirect the aspirations for a better life of rising middle classes around the world” — in other words, to reduce the standard of living for the middle classes in Western Europe and America.

However, as was uncovered during the Copenhagen summit, the program of “global redistribution of wealth” and transaction taxes largely centers around looting the wealth of the middle classes in richer countries and then using that money to bankroll the construction of world government. As the leaked “Danish text” revealed, the money generated from consumption taxes will go directly to the World Bank, not to developing countries to lower carbon emissions or alleviate poverty.

Under the terms of this proposal, poorer countries will not simply be handed the money pillaged from richer nations, instead they will be forced to accept “green loans” in the name of combating climate change, a policy that would land the already financially devastated third world with even more debt, payable to globalist institutions such as the IMF.

Even if you accept that global institutions who have proven to be completely corrupt time and time again should be empowered to steal from the rich and give to the poor, these proposals don’t even do that. This is all about bankrolling the expansion of world government and creating a giant slush fund that will be used to coerce smaller countries into allowing themselves to be ruled and regulated by a global bureaucracy funded by increasingly destitute taxpayers in the west.

We warned that globalists were embarking on a global financial transaction tax back in December when Lord Monckton obtained the draft proposals for the Copenhagen summit.

As Monckton revealed at the time, the end game is to “tax the American economy to the extent of 2 percent GDP, to impose a further tax of 2 percent on every financial transaction….and to close down effectively the economies of the west, transfer your jobs to third world countries.”

The tax, which was vehemently supported by President Obama in Copenhagen, will cost American families already laboring under the greatest financial collapse for generations at least $3,000 a year just for starters.

There can no longer be any denial that a world government is preparing to plunder the west by enforcing myriad different global consumption taxes, from financial levies to a carbon tax which will do absolutely nothing to address real environmental issues and will be used solely to expand the power of the World Bank, the IMF and the United Nations.

Allied to the global tax assault is the newly published IMF strategy document that calls for the implementation of a global currency, called the “bancor”, which will be pushed through by means of draconian regulatory measures that eviscerate sovereignty rights of nation states and hand complete economic control of the global economy over to a tiny and despotic ruling elite. The “bancor” will hand the IMF the power to manipulate exchange rates and determine the eventual collapse of the dollar.

Massive resistance must be focused around rejecting the institution of global taxes paid to the United Nations and the formation of a global currency otherwise the last tattered shreds of American sovereignty will be flushed down the toilet for good.

Obama, Merkel and Sarkozy Propose 1% (or More) Tax on All Financial Transactions

G20 Leaders Call for Global Financial Transaction Tax

October 6, 2011

Reuters - The European Commission said on Wednesday it would push next month's G20 summit to agree on a global financial transaction tax, but Canada said it may have enough support to block such a move.

Flanked by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a news conference in Brussels, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said it was time to push ahead with the initiative.

"The chancellor and I agreed that the time is right to create new momentum globally and at the G20 summit in Cannes, we will press for a global financial transaction tax," Barroso said.

The idea has run into stiff resistance from Canada, the United States, Australia, China and others. Canada has argued that its banks were sound during the recent recession and did not require bailing out.

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, in a speech to the financial industry in New York on Wednesday, noted that Canada and others had helped keep the Group of 20 (G20) leading economies from imposing a global tax.

"We will continue leading that charge against a transactions tax and I am confident that our allies on this point, who are the emerging economies, will stay with us and join us in opposing what we view as a counterproductive tax," he said.

"I am actually confident that we have enough of them in the G20 that we will be successful on that initiative," he added.

G20 finance ministers will meet next weekend in Paris and G20 leaders will meet November 3-4 in Cannes.

The European Union is proposing a 0.1 percent tax in the EU on trading bonds and shares from 2014, and a 0.001 percent tax on derivatives trading.

Britain also opposes such a tax and says it would only support a levy if it was global. Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said on Wednesday his country is against an EU-wide tax.

Merkel and Sarkozy Reveal 'Eurozone Government' Plan

August 17, 2011

Scotsman.com - Germany and France last night proposed a collective "eurozone government" led by the EU president to pull the region away from ecomomic turmoil. After talks in Paris, German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy said the 17 euro nations should be compelled by the centre to stick to a "golden rule" limiting deficits, starting from the summer of next year.

A "true European economic government" would co-ordinate fiscal policy across the continent, they said, with the aim of giving investors confidence that no one nation could be allowed to build up debt bubbles such as those seen in Greece.

They said they would soon propose a new EU-wide tax on financial transactions, and will also begin work on a new Franco-German corporate tax regime.

But Ms Merkel once again rejected a full fiscal union, scotching plans to issue "eurobonds" on behalf of the entire continent, as recommended last week by Italy.

She faces increasing pressure in Germany not to bail out the indebted nations of the south, which heightened yesterday with news that the country's economic growth had slowed to a virtual standstill.

US markets fell yesterday as the pair spoke but the European markets will give their own verdict today, amid doubts over what short-term difference the proposals will make.

It comes amid flatlining confidence in the markets in the ability of the eurozone nations in the south to stand by their debts. Last week, even France was having to deny rumours that its credit rating would be downgraded because of its own debt burden.

Under the Merkel-Sarkozy plan, the new eurozone "government" will consist of the heads of government of all the eurozone nations meeting two or three times a year, or more frequently at times of crisis. The European Union president, Herman van Rompuy, will chair the body. It will enshrine a more collective approach to governance of the region, giving the collective group far more oversight of individual decisions being made by nations to prevent them bingeing on cheap debt again.

"There has to be a stronger co-ordination of financial and economic policy" to protect the euro, Ms Merkel said. She added: "We will regain the lost confidence. That is why we go into a phase with a new quality of co-operation within the eurozone."

Mr Sarkozy said:

"We want to express our absolute will to defend the euro and assume Germany and France's particular responsibilities in Europe and to have on all of these subjects a complete unity of views."

He also said that France and Germany would kick off the process of greater integration by beginning work to merge their corporate taxes from 2013 onwards. The pair also said they would propose an EU-wide tax on financial transactions, to be outlined next month.

However, the short-term crisis afflicting debt-burdened nations such as Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain was highlighted by the head of the World Bank yesterday, who called on them to do more to face up to their unsustainable debts. Robert Zoellick said the nations "have not really gotten ahead of the problem". He added:

"I'm trying in a way that I can to start to condition both the political leadership and the general public - you've got to do more than you're doing and you have to move more actively."

He also said the decision by the European Central Bank to buy €22 billion (£19bn) of Italian and Spanish bonds last week was a short-term move and did not change the underlying problem of high debt levels.

Economy Debased by Lies, Fraud, and Bogus Statistics (Excerpt)

President Obama's finance team is recommending a one percent (1%) financial transaction fee (TAX). Obama's plan is to sneak it in after the November elections to keep it under the radar. This is a 1% tax on all transactions at any financial institution - banks, credit unions, savings and loans, etc. Any deposit you make, or even a transfer within your account, will have a 1% tax charged. In other words, any money, cash, check or whatever, no matter where it came from, you will pay a 1% fee if you put it in the bank.

August 6, 2011

Bob Chapman - ...The Bernanke, econobulls and trapped commodity and stock bulls should be extremely concerned that the ‘beneficial’ effects of QE are now greatly diminished.

1% TAX FOR ALL BANK TRANSACTIONS - OPEN YOUR EYES

This is a House bill. If this doesn't make you contact your congressman, nothing will.

Watch for this AFTER November elections; remember this BEFORE you VOTE in case you think Obama's looking out for your best interest.

This government just cannot think of enough ways to hurt the American people! This Bill must die! FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

President Obama's finance team is recommending a one percent (1%) transaction fee (TAX). Obama's plan is to sneak it in after the November elections to keep it under the radar.

This is a 1% tax on all transactions at any financial institution - banks, credit unions, savings and loans, etc. Any deposit you make, or even a transfer within your account, will have a 1% tax charged.

• If your paycheck or your social security or whatever is direct deposit, it will get a 1% tax charged for the transaction.

• If your paycheck is $1000, then you will pay Obama $10 just for the privilege of depositing your paycheck in your bank. Even if you hand carry your paycheck or any check into your bank for a deposit, 1% tax will be charged.

• You receive a $5,000 stock dividend from your broker, Obama takes $50 just to allow you to deposit that check in the bank.

• If you take $1,000 cash to deposit at your bank, 1% tax will be charged.

Mind you, this is from the man who promised that, if you make under $250,000 per year, you will not see one penny of new tax. Keep your eyes and ears open, you will be amazed at what you learn about this guy's under-the-table moves to increase the number of ways you are taxed.

Oh, and by the way, you receive a refund from the IRS next year and you have it direct deposited or you walk in to deposit that check, you guessed it. You will pay a 1% charge of that money just for putting it in your bank. Remember, any money, cash, check or whatever, no matter where it came from, you will pay a 1% fee if you put it in the bank.

Some will say, oh well, it's just 1%. Are you kidding me? It's a 1% tax increase across the board. Remember, once the tax is there, they can also raise it at will. And if anyone protests, they will just say, "oh, that's not really a tax, it's a user fee"! Think this is no big deal? Go back and look at the transactions you made from last year's banking statements. Then add the total of all those transactions and deduct 1%.

Still think it's no big deal???

From snopes.com:

Debt Free America Act - Is the U.S. government proposing a 1% tax on debit card usage and/or banking transactions?

It is true. The bill is HR-4646 introduced by US Rep Peter deFazio D-Oregon and US Senator Tom Harkin D-Iowa. Their plan is to sneak it in after the moved beyond proposing studies and submitted the Debt Free

America Act (H.R. 4646) , a bill calling for the implementation of a scheme to pay down the [2010] by Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.). His "Debt Free America Act" (H.R. 4646) would impose a 1 percent "transaction tax" on every financial transaction...

Ever since they fudged the numbers to pass ObamaCare, Democrats have abandoned credible spending plans.

It has been over two years since the Democrat-controlled Senate passed any budget at all.

Health-care costs rose about 8% in 2011 and are projected to rise by 8.5% in 2012. At this rate, taxes would have to rise again and again just to keep up with health-care spending. Is it any wonder that the president and his party are afraid to produce a budget that requires such ruinous levels of taxation?...

What caught our eye in Paul Ryan’s op-ed piece in the WSJ:

1) the admission that US leaders fudge economic and financial data; and

2) healthcare costs increased 8% in 2011.

The BLS has healthcare costs up only 2.9% y/y for June. Plus, the BLS greatly under-weighs healthcare at only 6.627% of CPI, even though it is about 17% of GDP. With realistic inflation accounting of healthcare, CPI would be ~1.17% higher; GDP would be negative. About 2 points of that increase came from gas prices…Inflation also played a part in higher clothing and food costs, and more expensive luxury items due to record prices for gold and silver…

Taxed-out New Yorkers are voting with their feet, with a staggering 1.6 million residents fleeing the state over the last decade. For the second consecutive decade, New York led the nation in the percentage of residents leaving for other states, according to the report by the Empire Center for State Policy.

US debt shot up $238 billion to reach 100 percent of gross domestic project after the government's debt ceiling was lifted, Treasury figures showed Wednesday…The new borrowing took total public debt to $14.58 trillion, over end-2010 GDP of $14.53 trillion, and putting it in a league with highly indebted countries like Italy and Belgium.

Note to those pining for QE 3.0: A main excuse for monetizing US debt was the desire to lower 10-year interest rates to stimulate housing.

1) This didn’t help housing; and

2) 10-year and 30-year interest rates are lower now than during QE 2.0.

Ergo the excuse to lower rates to aid the economy is not valid now.

We have warned that Bernanke was screwing up big time by not hiking rates, even marginally, when stocks and commodities started getting jiggy in 2010. Besides fomenting the inflation that would kill any economic recovery, Bernanke, in an egregious act of myopia, forfeited the interest rate reduction card.

"It seems we've thrown everything at it. We've had QE1 and QE2, Stimulus 1 and Stimulus 2, and the unemployment rate is still 9.2 percent," said John Makin, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "Maybe there are just not many options here at this point," he said…

"Everyone is really looking to the Fed to support the economy, and I think (Bernanke) would realize that you could only do so much with monetary policy," said Mike Knebel at Portland, Oregon-based Ferguson Wellman Capital Management.

The Fed's scope for more easing of monetary policy has been narrowed by a rise in core inflation, which bottomed at 0.9 percent in December but has since hit 1.3 percent.

SHORT NOTES

Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings affirmed their AAA credit ratings for the U.S. while warning that the ratings could be downgraded if lawmakers fail to enact debt reduction measures and the economy weakens. The rating outlook is now negative, Moody’s said in a statement yesterday after President Barack Obama signed into law a plan to lift the nation’s borrowing limit and cut spending. UPDATE: Standard & Poor downgrades US Credit Rating: http://centralny.ynn.com/content/top_stories/552622/standard---poor-downgrades-us-credit-rating/

[...]

Bank of New York said that it will charge 0.13% plus an additional fee if the one-month Treasury yield dips below zero on depositors that have accounts with an average monthly balance of $50 million "per client relationship," according to a letter reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The bank pays about 0.10% to the FDIC to insure deposit accounts, and if its deposits swell massively, it could face capital charges.

The likely loss of unemployment benefits for 3.71 million Americans in a few months will only add to an economy edging ever closer to recession. Bank of America Merrill Lynch economists say the ending of benefits for the so-called "99ers" those who have exceeded their normal benefit allotment and are on an emergency compensation program through the end of the year will slow the economy even further. The term comes from a previous extension to 99 weeks of eligibility for benefits.

Fiscal Conservatives Barred from Supercommittee. Three Republican Senate sources tell TWS that senators who vote against the deal will be ineligible to serve on the so-called “supercommittee” for deficit reduction that the legislation creates. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/fiscal-conservatives-barred-supercommittee_581921.html

Congressman Ron Paul warns that the all-powerful new “Super Congress” created by the vote on the debt ceiling will be used to fast-track tax increases while concentrating more power over the nation’s purse strings in the hands of the Washington elite. http://www.infowars.com/ron-paul-sounds-alarm-on-disturbing-super-congress/

WHO Moving Ahead on Financial Transaction Tax, Internet Tax, Online Bill Paying Tax, and Other Taxes

World Health Organization Moving Ahead on Billions in Internet and Other Taxes

The World Health Organization is moving full speed ahead with a controversial plan to impose billions of dollars in global consumer taxes on such things as Internet activity and everyday financial transactions like paying bills online — while its spending soars and its own financial house is in disarray.

May 10, 2010

FOXNews.com - The World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations' public health arm, is moving full speed ahead with a controversial plan to impose global consumer taxes on such things as Internet activity and everyday financial transactions like paying bills online — while its spending soars and its own financial house is in disarray.

The aim of its taxing plans is to raise "tens of billions" of dollars for WHO that would be used to radically reorganize the research, development, production and distribution of medicines around the world, with greater emphasis on drugs for communicable diseases in poor countries.

The irony is that the WHO push to take a huge bite out of global consumers comes as the organization is having a management crisis of its own, juggling finances, failing to use its current resources efficiently, or keep its costs under control — and it doesn't expect to show positive results in managing those challenges until a year from now, at the earliest.

Fox News initially reported last January on the "suite of proposals" for "new and innovative sources of funding," prepared by a 25-member panel of medical experts, academics and health care bureaucrats, when it was presented of a meeting of WHO's 34-member Executive Board in Geneva.

Now the proposals are headed for the four-day annual meeting of the 193-member World Health Assembly, WHO's chief legislative organ, which begins in Geneva on May 17.

The Health Assembly, a medical version of the United Nations General Assembly, will be invited to "take note" of the experts' report. It will then head back with that passive endorsement to another Executive Board meeting, which begins May 22, for further action. It is the Executive Board that will "give effect" to the Assembly's decisions.

What it all means is that a major lobbying effort could soon be underway to convince rich governments in particular to begin taxing citizens or industries to finance a drastic restructuring of medical research and development on behalf of poorer ones.

The scheme would leave WHO in the middle, helping to manage a "global health research and innovation coordination and funding mechanism," as the experts' report calls it.

In effect, the plan amounts to a pharmaceutical version of the U.N.-sponsored climate-change deal that failed to win global approval at Copenhagen last December. If implemented as the experts suggest, it could easily involve the same kind of wealth transfers as the failed Copenhagen summit, which will send $30 billion a year to poor nations, starting this year.

The WHO strategy involves a wide variety of actions to transfer "pharmaceutical-related technology," and its production, along with intellectual property rights, to developing countries, according to a condensed "global strategy and plan of action" also being presented to the World Health Assembly.

Regional "networks for innovation" would be cultivated across the developing world, and some regions, such as Africa, would be encouraged to develop technology to exploit "traditional medicines."

According to the condensed plan of action being presented to the Assembly, a number of those initiatives are already well under way.

Click here to read the plan of action.

The rationale for the drastic restructuring of medical R and D, as outlined in the group of experts' report, is the skewed nature of medical research in the developed world, which concentrates largely on non-communicable diseases, notably cancer, and scants research on malaria, tuberculosis and other communicable scourges of poor countries. It cites a 1986 study that claimed that only 5 percent of global health research and development was applied to the health problems of developing countries.

(In dissecting contemporary medical R and D, however, the expert report glosses over the historical fact that many drugs for fighting communicable diseases in developing countries are already discovered; the issue in many cases is the abysmal living and hygienic conditions that make them easily transmitted killers.)

What truly concerns the experts, however, is how to get the wealth transfers that will make the R and D transfers possible — on a permanent basis. The panel offers up a specific number of possibilities.

Chief among them:

• "digital" or "bit" tax on Internet activity, which could raise "tens of billions of U.S. dollars";
• 10 percent tax on international arms deals, "worth about $5 billion per annum";
• financial transaction tax, citing a Brazilian levy that was raising some $20 billion per year until it was canceled (for unspecified reasons);
• airline tax that already exists in 13 countries and has raised some $1 billion.

Almost casually, the panel's report notes that the fundraising effort would involve global changes in legal structures — and policing. As the report puts it:

"Introducing a new tax or expanding an existing tax may require legal changes, nationally and internationally and ongoing regulation to ensure compliance."

As a backup, the panel offers some less costly, voluntary alternatives, including "solidarity contributions" via mobile telephone usage, or set-asides on income taxes.

Yet another alternative: new health care contributions from countries such as China, India or Venezuela, or higher contributions from rich countries — neither idea looking likely in the current climate of international financial crisis. In the report's words:

"Channeling these resources in this way can only be achieved if there is political will to do so and a convincing case is made."

Click here to read the financing report.

As follow-up, the experts suggest that WHO promote each and every suggested approach for new financing, along with "regulatory harmonization and integration" in the developing world, "research and development platforms in the developing world," and new "product development partnerships" to kick-start the global medicines program.

Just as big an issue for WHO, however, may be whether it can adequately manage the money it is already getting — or trying to get — for its current planned needs.

Other budget documents intended for the World Health Assembly, and obtained by Fox News, paint a picture of an organization where:

• spiraling financial demands are beginning to outstrip the ability of member-nations to pay;
• outsized headquarters budgets, in contrast to the regional and country networks where WHO's public health work is largely done, are rising even faster than the overall budget; and
• efforts to control onerous staff costs are just getting underway.

Those challenges are laid out in WHO's proposed biennial budget for 2010-2011, which calls for a combination of mandatory and voluntary contributions from the world's nations — meaning, overwhelmingly, the three dozen richest ones — of $5.4 billion — a whopping 27 percent increase over the same initial draft figure for 2008-2009.

But that increase, large as it is, will likely be far less than WHO needs before the latest biennium ends. In 2008-2009, the initial $4.23 billion draft budget was "revised" to a final $4.95 billion during the two-year period, a 17 percent increase.

Using the same inflationary measure, WHO's spending could well climb to $6.3 billion before the end of 2011.

Click here for the draft 2010-2011 budget.

One of the biggest jumps would come in the spending centered on WHO's headquarters in pricey Geneva — a 44 percent climb in its share of program budgets, from $1.18 billion to $1.7 billion, even before any future "revisions."

WHO planners point to the shrinking value of the U.S. dollar, its budgeted currency, against the Swiss franc as a major factor, which they say has increased costs by 15 percent. But other factors include more meetings for WHO's governing bodies and salary provisions for the top officers of the WHO Secretariat.

According to documents presented to the program, budget and administration committee of WHO's Executive Board, headquarters costs for the organization have remained proportionately steady for years at almost 38 percent of WHO's spending, however much that spending has grown. The ratio is striking, since WHO devotes most of its efforts to improving health care conditions in the developing world.

The organization's stated goal is to spend only 30 percent of its program funding in Geneva, but the same planners think it is "unrealistic" to think WHO will reach that objective, even by 2013.

In foggy bureaucratic language, they declare that "a change that is too swift and radical will be disruptive to the entire function of the Organization or fail because of an insurmountable accumulation of practical problems of execution."

Translation: the WHO bureaucracy won't easily cooperate.

In a bid to get the head-to-tail ratio under better control, WHO's top managers have set ceilings for headquarters hiring, but these only went into effect this year. The hiring limits will not cut the Geneva head-count but limit its further growth — "an acknowledgement," the document says, "that staff numbers are the main driver of WHO's expenditures."

That combination of WHO's sharp hikes in costs and a grim economic climate have led to another major management problem: "continued disparities between the approved budgets and the available resources."

In other words, WHO's member states and donors are not paying up as fast as the organization is spending the money across its many and varied priorities, leading to budgetary juggling and behind the scenes efforts to get major donor countries to ante up future contributions in advance, and cough up more voluntary funds in the future.

In its planning committee documents, the WHO bureaucracy promises to get a better grip on its finances in the near future.

Among the cost management efforts will be higher levies on voluntary donations to cover WHO staff costs — higher administrative fees, in short — along with more voluntary and "fully flexible" donations that can be used at the management's discretion, rather than being earmarked for specific programs.

Click here for the resource management report.

It will be another year, however, before WHO's overseers will be able to see if its management juggling will bear adequate fruit.

All in all, that is not a confidence-building credential for an organization that is simultaneously trying to reorganize the world's medical research, development, production and distribution system — and make the world's consumers and taxpayers pick up most of the multibillion-dollar tab.

International Monetary Fund Backs Tobin Tax

IMF presses for tax on banks' risky behaviour

Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn says financial institutions should bear cost of insuring against world economic crises

October 2, 2009

guardian.co.uk - IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the Istanbul Congress Centre Dominique Strauss-Kahn ruled out a 'Tobin-style' tax on currency transactions but the IMF will research other options.

The International Monetary Fund today threw its weight behind a new tax on the global financial sector designed to limit risky speculative behaviour and help the world's poorest countries.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF's managing director, said banks and other big financial institutions were responsible for systemic risk and it was only right that they provided resources to mitigate those threats to the world economy.

While ruling out a so-called Tobin tax – a levy on foreign currency transactions proposed by the American economist James Tobin in the early 1970s – Strauss-Kahn said a high-level IMF team would work on proposals in the coming months.

"The very simple idea of putting a tax on transactions won't work for many technical reasons," Strauss-Kahn said at a press conference held in the run-up to the IMF's annual meeting in Istanbul next week.

"On the other hand, considering the financial sector is creating a lot of systemic risks for the global economy, it is fair that the sector pay some part of its resources to mitigate risks it is creating itself."

Strauss-Kahn said a team led by the IMF's number two, John Lipsky, would be looking at the merits of setting up a fund that would provide some form of insurance against future financial crises, as well as help for low-income countries.

The fund was asked to investigate "Tobin-style" taxes by last week's G20 summit in Pittsburgh following pressure from the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Merkel believes a levy on global finance should be used to help poor countries adapt to climate change, while Sarkozy said that the IMF should draw up proposals for a "tax on speculative or risky financial activities".

Lipsky said that he accepted the idea of a form of deposit insurance paid for by the financial sector:

"How should the potential damaging costs to the global economy [from risky behaviour] be borne? It is right to think about them being borne by the financial sector more broadly. The G20 has asked us to look at this question and it is a very valid question."

Britain and the US, both of which have strong financial sectors, have always been lukewarm about transaction taxes, arguing that they are impractical and will drive business offshore. But any suspicion that the IMF would kick the idea into the long grass under pressure from Washington and London was removed by the comments of Strauss-Kahn and Lipsky yesterday.

Tobin's original suggestion was a small levy of perhaps 0.1% on currency transactions, which would deter speculators targeting a country's economy for short-term gains.

This idea returned to public prominence at the end of August when Lord Turner, head of the UK's Financial Services Authority, said that the swollen and "socially useless" banking sector should be taxed back down to size.

Turner told Prospect magazine:

"If you want to stop excessive pay in a swollen financial sector you have to reduce the size of that sector or apply special taxes to its pre-remuneration profit. Higher capital requirements against trading activities will be our most powerful tool to eliminate excessive activity and profits."

Charities including Oxfam and War on Want welcomed Turner's comments.

The IMF said later that the study would be undertaken by its fiscal affairs department, which would report back to the G20 by next June.

The UK Treasury said today that there were a number of problems with the sort of mandatory insurance plan being considered by the fund's economists.

Any initiative designed by the IMF would have to apply globally to stop banks playing countries off against each other.

Max Lawson, senior policy adviser to Oxfam, said:

"This could be a hugely popular tax, making the banks pay for the mess they made. Bankers will fight this tooth and nail but they must be resisted by G20 leaders."