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“There’s the idea of taxing financial transactions, which have exploded in recent decades. The economic value of all this trading is dubious at best. In fact, there’s considerable evidence suggesting that too much trading is going on.”

That was no less respected a voice than Paul Krugman, writing this week in the New York Times about “Things to Tax.” He continued:

 “Because there are so many transactions, such a fee could yield several hundred billion dollars in revenue over the next decade. Again, this compares favorably with the savings from many of the harsh spending cuts being proposed in the name of fiscal responsibility.”

Calls for the financial transaction tax have only been getting louder and stronger in recent weeks and months. The passion stoked by the Occupy Wall Street movement has brought the nation’s and the world’s eyes back to the big banks and the bankers who crashed the global economy with their “sophisticated” financial instruments and rapid-fire trading of mortgages and anything else that could be packaged into a security and sold, many times over, each time at a profit.