This sounds like Tobin.

>Great idea! That way this new tax, which will be passed directly onto the consumer,
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>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? But that's not the case: their system relies on extracting from the wider community that receives zilch benefit from the practice. And then when the bankers screw up and run away, the consumer is left with the bill again.
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>That's why I mused about a closed system- sort of an "xBox Live" for asset trading hi-jinks. You load your $ into the game and then you trade with other players, extracting as much as you can by sending $ back and forth. What fun! The only difference will be that profits are not carved out of the rest of society and in the real world prices will reflect the market rather than the number of traders taking positions for no good purpose.
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>The NZ story is illustrative as it is a small market and is easily measured: the daily NZ$ trade is approximately equivalent to the entire annual imports and exports for the whole country. IOW the entire year's business is transacted in one day's worth of trade with the rest representing currency trades for their own sake. One of the effects of this speculation is currency volatility- the NZ$ was at US$.48 six months ago but is expected to break US$.70 imminently. This level of volatility makes legitimate business more difficult because it imposes currency risk and disadvantages exporters. The same effects are seen in other markets but being larger the effects are not as extreme or easy to measure, but you can be sure that the consumer is still carrying the cost of this game.
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>Why would any sane society agree to that? Give them their own sandpit or create disincentives for destructive behavior.