HFT is a technical blight.

You probably know the Tobin tax was orignally proposed as a tax on currency exchange deals. But the general idea of putting a small transaction tax on ALL deals is a very good idea, in my opinion. Of course it would mean all deals would have to go through some sort of exchange. Which is what CDS players have been lobbying hard against.

They are afraid it would highlight the dubious nature of much of what they do. Dubious in the sense of being profitalbe to a few while creating large risks which those few will quickly dump onto the many, as soon as the risks go bad.

My view is that the arguments used by those opposed to Tobin type taxes are spurious and self serving.

They talk about how such a tax would reduce growth or profits. But growth in what and profits for whom?

The kind of deals such a tax would curb are precely those we should curb. The loss of growth would be welcome because it is a decline in growth of the most destablizing and socially worthless activities. The loss in profits would be a loss in the kind of profits that have largely driven bubble formation and unwise risk taking. As such, a loss in those profits would, again, be to society's benefit.

Only the bankers would lose. Predictably it is the bankers making the self serving arguments.

Now the question is, would anyone want to read it.

A sort of unauthorized, alternative explanation of what happened and and why.

Anonymity problems aside, after a year of blogging you'll have enough for a book.