While Labour are taking MANA's 'feed the kids' policy, what about the financial transaction tax?

While Labour are taking MANA's 'feed the kids' policy, what about the financial transaction tax?

There's a lot of chatter about what we should do with our high currency that is boiling our exporters dry and crushing our ability to generate jobs (Gordon Campbell makes the excellent point that a lower dollar would hurt poor people first). To date Labour seem to want to expand the Reserve Banks focus to take into account more than inflation by taking billions and buying up our currency.

I'm not sure speculating on our currency is the smartest move. We have the 10th most traded currency while we are the 28th largest economy in a list that doesn't include China, India, Brazil or Russia.

So that puts us at 32.

So speculating in this market when everyone else has a bigger credit card than us sounds like the perfect recipe for blowing the years GDP down at the global casino of currency speculation.

If NZ implemented a financial transaction tax that included currency trading, the extra tax would dampen the global desire to buy up our currency in the vast 24 hour hot money drift net while also generating the income that could help subsidize more public transport to partially offset the higher imported petrol costs.

It's time NZ studied a financial transaction tax to lower our currency while creating desperately needed State revenue.

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