Jesse Jackson backs tax on financial transactions

LONDON (AFP) – US civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson threw his weight Monday behind international calls for a tax on financial transactions to recoup losses from the economic crisis.

Jackson said it was "time to pass a Robin Hood tax on financial speculation," in a speech to students at Britain's Cambridge University.

"This is a change moment, a time to re-make the world's financial systems," he added, and called for a "new global economic agenda."

President Barack Obama has proposed levying a fee on top US banks to raise 90 billion dollars (66 billion euros, 60 billion pounds) in 10 years to claw back "every single dime" of the recent Wall Street bailout.

He has also announced plans to limit the size and scope of US banks, saying they would "never again" get so big that taxpayers have to bail them out.

Britain has promoted the idea of a tax on financial transactions, despite expressing scepticism over the US proposals which it says would not have prevented the financial crisis.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has urged leading economies to consider a tax on transactions -- known as a Tobin Tax -- to make banks more accountable to society.

A Tobin Tax was originally proposed in 1971 by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin as a means of reducing speculation in global markets, but he himself later doubted the idea was workable.

Speaking to the Cambridge Union, the university's debating society, Jackson urged government to play a "stronger" role.

"It must intervene to protect the majority from the tyranny of the ruling minority," he said.

Jackson, 68, is a former associate of assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King, and made his own unsuccessful runs for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988.

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