Word: idea
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...world has channeled Adam Smith, dusted off John Maynard Keynes and revisited Eugene Fama. In recent days, it's been James Tobin's turn. Close to four decades since the Yale economist proposed a levy on foreign-exchange transactions - or a "Tobin tax," as the suggestion became known - the idea is enjoying a new lease of life. At a meeting of G-20 finance ministers last weekend, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested the group of leading countries consider the tax to establish "a better economic and social contract between financial institutions and the public based on trust...
...poor reception? For a tax that's attracted high-profile backers like Brown and Sarkozy, its track record is thin. When Tobin first proposed the idea in 1972, it was seen as a way to stop currency speculators after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, but it was never imposed. Sweden enacted a tax on certain financial transactions in the 1980s but ditched it in 1991 after trading volumes sank. (See pictures of President Sarkozy in London...
...which leaves the tax as a basic means of raising funds. And in that respect, there may be simpler methods. Because of the lukewarm response from other countries to Brown's suggestion, the British government was quick to reduce the levy to one of several ideas the Prime Minister had for recouping taxpayers' billions. Another idea - that banks themselves pay into a central rescue fund, with contributions determined by a lender's size or risk exposure - could yet prove more popular...
...likes to get to know a girl before he marries her.’ ‘Where you come from it is customary to boil vegetables until they fall apart. This does not mean,’ said Samad tersely, ‘that it is a good idea.’” The irony of course is that Archie, who met his first wife in Italy after the war, knows nothing of her long history of mental illness, “two hysteric aunts, an uncle who talked to eggplants, and a cousin who wore...
...Asaro’s crawling adventure started in January 2008, when she flipped past the flashy cover of the “Guinness World Records” at a bookstore near her home in Seattle, Wash. Intrigued, she entertained the idea of pursuing a record herself...