Mark Cuban Advises Occupy Wall Street

by Stuart Shapiro

Mark Cuban is one of my all time favorite sports owners.  He says what he thinks, wants to win and understands the importance of the fans.  I didn’t realize he also has a blog.  In today’s entry, the billionaire advises Occupy Wall Street on what they should be demanding.  Before you roll your eyes, take a look at the advice.

The simplest way to change this is to place a very simple per share tax on every transaction. 10 cents a trade. Every share. Every option. Every Bond. Every currency transaction.  Every trade.

The obvious response is that trading volume will plummet. So what ? Let it. The next response is that traders will merely move their trades to foreign exchanges. Yes they will. Will transaction costs go up ? Duh.. that is the point. The market thrived when spreads and transaction costs were much higher just a few short years ago. It will survive now. . .

More importantly, it might just put the market back to the basics of what the stock and bond markets are supposed to be, a means of raising capital to support corporate growth.  There used to be a time when Investment Bank Partnerships made their money scouting out small companies in need of capital and matching them with investors. They weren’t as big as they are now, but they managed to create quite a few growth industries. Something we could use some of today.  Making the stock market a launching pad for companies will have far greater value and impact employment far greater than making sure High Frequency Traders can get their trades in.

I don’t agree with everything Cuban has to say but it is refreshing to see someone take a new look at the problems that caused our financial crisis and proposing unique solutions.  We could use more ideas like this.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.