>Great idea! That way this new tax, which will be passed directly onto the consumer,
>
>What consumer? ;-) If traders are moving $ back and forth to shave profit, the only consumer is each other. Who could object if their profits and mega-bonuses were extracted from each other?

Yeah, one well designed financial video game could have saved the world. They place their bets, erect their assets, derivatives or whatever and then everybody grab their joystick. Winner gets 2 billion 'golden parashute' done in WPF/Silverlight {g}