By Juhani Artto
August 25, 1999
Helsinki - Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen's new government included in its programme a brief remark on the need to restrain international capital transfers. The programme gives no hints about what kind of concrete means could be considered for this.
In late June the Metalworkers Union President Per-Erik Lundh came out with one such concrete proposal: he is in favour of applying a mechanism known as the Tobin tax. In practise this means that the international community should levy a small tax on short-term international capital transfers. The goal would mainly be to discourage the speculative transfers that cause instability in the global financial system as a whole. A major proportion of the more than USD 1,000 billion dollar daily transfers are purely speculative.
Lundh's position gives momentum to the Tobin tax demand in Finland where Kepa, the umbrella organisation for NGOs in international development work, has recently started to campaign for a global Tobin tax.
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