His promise to tax "Wall Street speculators" as social restitution for the taxpayer-funded bailout of 2008 is misguided at best. This tax targets helpful market activity that had nothing to do with the risky subprime mortgage loans that prompted the bailout. Further still, it goes beyond Wall Street to tens of millions of investors whenever they, or those managing their retirement savings, trade stocks and bonds. Recently, the Dutch Finance Ministry called a financial transaction tax "a charge on pensions." An ironic twist given the strong support Sanders enjoys from unions.



A link on Sanders' website explaining how the tax "would generate about $300 billion in revenue," leads only to a memo by Robert Pollin and James Heintz of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. That document begins "we emphasize that our conclusions are not based on anything close to the type of solid foundation in research and evidence that one would normally expect in considering such an important question."



(Note: After this piece was published, the link on the Sanders campaign web site was changed.)