Forex Speculations and G20
The last few months have born witness to an unprecedented level of volatility in forex markets, to say nothing of the fluctuations in other areas of securities markets. Emerging markets currencies in particular, as well as a handful of industrialized currencies, have crashed violently, as a process of de-leveraging continues to send capital back to the US and Japan. This instability has led some policy-makers to revive an erstwhile exhortation to limit the role of speculators in forex markets, who collectively may account for as much as 90% of daily forex turnover. Specifically, a 1% tax on all forex trades has been proposed, which would be deducted automatically and used to finance infrastructure projects around the world. It has also been suggested that forex markets follow the lead of equity markets by adopting a so-called “up-tick” rule, which would be used to counter sudden waves of predatory short-selling that can cripple a country’s currency in minutes. CSRwire reports:
Such bear raids are rarely to “discipline” a country’s policies, as traders claim, but rather to make quick profits. In the transparent FXTRS system, traders selling falling currencies begin to see that the rising tax is cascading into the country’s currency stabilization fund and cutting into their gains.
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Posted on November 24, 2008
at 2:52 pm
Written / posted by: Simon
Filed under: Uncategorized