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	G20: Support the Robin Hood Financial Transaction Tax by Jeffrey Sachs, Kelly Crichton Canada   May 2010   Robin Hood tax"s time has come, by Jeffrey Sachs.   The US, UK, French and other governments have finally recognised the need to raise taxes on the financial sector, both on the banks balance sheets and perhaps on financial transactions as well. Amazingly, the big banks have mostly gotten a free ride right through the financial crisis. Wall Street continued to pay itself mega-bonuses in 2008 and 2009, pocketing more than $20bn this past holiday season. Total Wall Street profits in 2009 are estimated at more than $55bn, a record, pumped up by cheap loans from the Federal Reserve to the banks that were lent onward at a significant spread.   The urgency of increased tax revenues is clear enough. The US budget deficit is around $1.5 trillion this year, more than 10% of GDP, and with prospects of $1 trillion a year deficits as far as the eye can see. The UK budget deficit is even more dramatic, at around 13% of GDP this year.   The US and UK governments have suggested a tax on the banks balance sheets, such as a tax on the banks liabilities. Such a balance sheet tax is advisable, but not sufficient. It"s time, too, to tax financial transactions as well, on currency, derivatives, and other financial assets.   Derivatives markets, for example, have soared in size, without proper regulation, taxation, or discernible societal benefits, and arguably with huge social costs (as in the massively misguided market for credit default swaps). As the late Nobel laureate James Tobin argued almost 40 years ago, macroeconomic stability and microeconomic efficiency will both be enhanced by a tax on the financial casino.   The introduction of a financial transactions tax has been debated since Tobin first made the proposal. The case for a Tobin tax has grown stronger over time, as the motivations to raise revenues, restrain speculative trades and soak up excess trading profits all are stronger than ever. Moreover, the administrative capacity to levy and collect such taxes has also strengthened, as has the likelihood of reaching a trans-Atlantic consensus on introducing such taxes. The key point is that after more than 30 years of debating a financial transactions tax, it"s time to do it.   The Robin Hood tax campaign, to levy a financial transactions tax and allocate a designated portion for global development assistance (as Tobin himself had proposed) therefore has enormous merit. Of all of the uses of government revenues today, the most urgent of all is surely to meet our commitments to the world"s poorest people. Closing the deficit of political will on urgent development aid is a matter of life and death.   The time has come to implement the Robin Hood tax. Ideally the new tax will be introduced both in the US and Europe. If the US delays, however, in response to the Wall Street lobby, then the UK and the rest of Europe should simply move ahead with the tax to get their own house in order.   May 2010   G20: Support the Robin Hood Financial Transaction Tax, by Kelly Crichton.   When discussions began prior to the G20 in Pittsburgh last year to "do something" about the banks and the mess the global economy was in, Gordon Brown raised the idea of a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT). This would be a tiny levy of .05% on all commercial global financial transactions. The G20 was asked to study the idea and report back.   The FTT would earn a very substantial amount of money each year - something in the order of $400+ billion per year. Half of the funds raised would remain in domestic hands, and could be used to shore up domestic social programs. The other half of the funds would go into a global fund to aid development in the world"s poorest countries and to help developing countries adapt their economies to the realities of climate change.   It was recognition that the poorer countries who had no hand in creating either the current economic crisis or the over-consumption that has led to global warming, but were suffering unequally as a result of both.   The FTT or The Robin Hood Tax has had a great deal of support in the UK and Europe, with Oxfam International a strong supporter, but also because it was seen by many people to be a global tax whose time had come.   The FTT recognizes the development obligations involved in our interconnected global community. Even more pressing, given that the economic crisis has meant major cutbacks by a number of G8 countries in their aid commitments. They are already $18 Billion dollars behind in their previous promises. Just think what a Robin Hood Tax could do to that deficit! Visit the related web page
	UN Crime Congress calls for action to reduce Prison Overcrowding by United Nations News Brazil   April, 2010   An overhaul of criminal justice systems in countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe was needed to reduce inhumane overcrowding in prisons - a major cause of recidivism which did nothing to improve public safety, speakers said today as the Twelfth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice continued in Salvador, Brazil.   “This is a humanitarian disaster in many parts of the world,” Rob Allen, Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies at Kings College in London, said during a workshop on strategies and best practices against overcrowding in correctional facilities. “Like any humanitarian disaster there is a need for short-term relief, but it must combine with long-term sustainable solutions.”   Overcrowding existed in rich and poor countries, and in common and civil law jurisdictions alike, Mr. Allen said, recalling that in 2009 it had led to violent protests in France, the deaths by suffocation of two prisoners in Ghana and murder in Venezuela.   In Manila, 5,000 inmates were crammed into a jail built for 1,000, he said, adding that overcrowding was particularly acute in post-conflict countries in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as Haiti. In California, judges had ruled that it was a chief impediment to health care, and in South America, courts had issued mandates against it. Overcrowding could lead to suicide, particularly among women and children, and it was a major factor in the transmission of tuberculosis.   He went on to define overcrowding as the lack of sufficient space for prisoners to sleep in safety, for women to be kept apart from men, for separating juveniles from adults and serious offenders from minor offenders.   It was difficult to measure because there was no universal agreement on that definition, he said, noting the scarcity of data on standards for adequate space, which varied from one country to another. Even more scarce were statistics on how prisoners perceived overcrowding. “It is one thing to sleep in a very small space; it is quite another to spend 23 hours a day in that space,” he said.   In 2005, he said, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had called for a minimum of 3.4 square metres per person, while the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment had called for greater space.   Prison systems in some countries, such as Ireland, had merely created bunk beds to double cell capacity, while in others the large numbers of pretrial detainees - often half of all detained persons - had caused crowding, despite the system not being at full occupancy nationwide, as was the case in the Russian Federation and Cameroon.   Introducing the workshop, Claudia Baroni of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that more than 9.8 million people were held in penal institutions worldwide. Overcrowded conditions violated their basic rights, undermined the safety of prison staff and the general public, and weakened the ability of prison systems to meet prisoners’ basic health-care, food and accommodation needs, as well as their rehabilitation, education, training and recreational activities.   Moreover, overcrowding hindered the effective management of prisons, and the ability of the authorities to address prisoners’ social reintegration needs and ensure that their treatment met United Nations norms and standards. Visit the related web page
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