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Comment by supercanuck | Hacker News Reader

>By the numbers: Sanders plans to pay for the action by hitting Wall Street with a tax his campaign says will raise $2.2 trillion over 10 years, according Vox.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_...

This is some relevant background reading for anyone who thinks Bernie's tax revenue numbers are realistic.

>The volume of futures trading fell by 98% and the options trading market disappeared

You have to wonder what the second-order effects of the options trading market disappearing (or being severely reduced in volume) would be.

I know there are some pretty important businesses that depend on options to hedge against commodity prices. Airliners and oil come to mind.

i would say getting rid of this market makes the financial system healthier. 2008 crash could have been avoided with something like this

Would it? It wasn't options trading that caused 2008; it was bad home loans.

yes. the derivatives built on top of bad home loans caused the contagion. it would have been close to a non-event if there were no derivatives based on the bad homeloans.

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0210/did-derivat...

https://www.thebalance.com/role-of-derivatives-in-creating-m...

The derivatives were traded in massive blocks, not in high-frequency transactions where fees adding up matters.

As we learned in 2008, taking $2.2 trillion from "Wall Street" will have major effects on "Main Street" (we nearly had a total economic meltdown over Wall Street holding a "mere" $0.5T in toxic assets). Wall Street is not some wholly separate entity from the rest of the economy.

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