a surtax on short-term gains is unlikely to work because there are too many ways around it and - as usual - the only people caught in the web would be little guys. plus the tax code is already far too complicated.
i agree that criminals need to pay up, but the truth is shareholders already have far, far more power than they chose to wield.
if "investors" would do something as simple as actually reading the financials of the companies they're "investing" in, much of the excess would get stopped before it is started due to the glazed-eye effect. fact is, no legislation - and no amount of legislation - will ever be able to compensate for lazy "investors".
imo investing in mutual funds where you don't know who is running the show and you don't know what they are buying, when they are buying it and why they are buying it, is an obvious example of lazy "investing".
(obviously this doesn't apply to those who choose their mufus on more than the 12-month morningstar ranking.)
traders are also a different breed, and the market ensures a fairly quick weeding-out of the undisciplined. and i'm sure that no traders on this board violate rule #1: don't gamble with money you can't afford to lose.
