[1] It is a proposed piece of legislation that was introduced into the United States House of Representatives on December 3, 2009 to assess a tax on US financial market securities transactions.
[2] The day he introduced the bill, DeFazio said, "The American taxpayers bailed out Wall Street during a crisis brought on by reckless speculation in the financial markets.
This legislation will force Wall Street to do their part and put people displaced by that crisis back to work.
[2] These are the elements of his proposal:[4] To ensure the tax is appropriately targeted to speculators and has no impact on the average investor and pension funds, the tax will be refunded for:[6] Criticism of this bill has included (1) a December 2009 Wall Street Journal op-ed by Burton G. Malkiel and George U. Sauter;[7] (2) a December 2009 online op-ed by Irene Aldridge;[8] and (3) a December 2010 Tulane Law Review article by Richard T. Page, who has suggested that imposing a financial-transactions tax in response to the 2007-2010 economic downturn would be "foolish revenge".
For instance, Princeton University Professor of Economics Burton G. Malkiel, author of classic finance book A Random Walk Down Wall Street and several publications on mutual fund performance, predicted that: Wall Street" would not foot the bill for the presumed $150 billion [transactions] tax.
In fact, the tax would simply be added to the cost of doing business, burdening all investors, including 401(k) plans, IRAs and mutual funds.