At least since the Reagan-Thatcher era, the political cli-mate has been hostile to taxes. Nobody thinks kindly of them. Even fresh proposals with some merits, such as flat tax rates and consumption levies, make little headway with politicians and public opinion. A case in point is the financial transaction tax, an innovation -if that label still applies to a 40-year-old idea-that has effectively been shouted down in the banking capitals of London and New York. The opposition carried the day when French President Nicolas Sarkozy failed to win an official endorsement of his FTT proposal at the November Group of 20 meeting in France.
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