# David McWilliams - Time to tackle the traders - Aug 15 2011



## onq (15 Aug 2011)

Regulating Traders, something I have called for on AAM for many months, has finally begun to trickle into the brains of the economic intelligentsia.

Does this include regulating and transparently reporting on over-the-counter trades, derivatives and credit default swaps and their effects on the market? Its hard to say.

The concept of _*taxing*_ the banks and traders on financial transactions including micro-trades to help pay for the disaster they caused seems to have escaped McWilliams notice.

Still its a small step in the right direction.

ONQ

-----------------------


From:

[broken link removed]
The attitudes and greed of traders in the markets are leading to chaos.
 This is why they need to be controlled and policed; otherwise we are  in a situation where these guys will boss around governments and their  lackeys in the rating agencies – who got everything wrong in the past  few years. And they will become more powerful than elected politicians.
 The markets aren’t clever or smart; I know because I have worked in  them. I have seen good companies along the old East European train route  dismantled by people who knew nothing about the specific industry and  sold off to people who knew even less.
 I have seen credible countries dragged into the mire just because  some trader on a losing streak has to sell a performing asset to cover  the losses on his falling assets. This rapacious form of capitalism only  benefits a tiny handful of people. It makes the world unstable and puts  countries on collision courses with each other, which European history  suggests, can lead to something much worse.
 If you don’t want to believe that, just take a train journey through central Europe and consider what actually happened there.


----------

