Christmas Adverts article..... December Blog coming soon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/20/christmas-adverts-john-lewis

Idea 1. Plug holes in financial regulations and get rich!

People are trying to work out a way to both regulate and tax the financial services industry. 

Are Public Servants really going to be able to regulate an industry where the key players earn 100's of multiples of those that are trying to regulate them? How many hundreds of people in central London take home more than the combined incomes of the G20 leaders? A lot is my guess.

The people best placed to come up with the best ideas are the best paid people currently working in financial services. I'm sure you can motivate those whom don't feel guilty about taking advantage of the current holes in regulation by paying them enough. The ultimate poacher come gamekeeper. 

Maybe if this gets passed on, somewhere in the world is a genius sitting reading this, surrounded by other geniuses. Their study of Ancient Greek and their post grad MBA puts them in the perfect position to be able to help mould what the world needs most at the moment in our modern capitalistic society. 

Who will be seen as the bastion of a fair modern economic society?

Bill Gates is in Europe at the moment and he was interviewed yesterday and said he was in support of a transaction fee on financial transactions. How does this work? Who and what transactions does it tax?  It's not yet clear to me how this might work. It's an idea.....

What about this idea.

Bill offers a $1m prize for the person who writes the formulae to make this work? If it meant that someone could design a way of plugging the gaping holes in financial regulations then would others sponsor the prize as well? 

How much do you need to pay a hedge fund manager, who takes advantage of holes in regulations to make massive profits, to be the person who devises the very formulae that closes these holes? Assuming appealing to their moral prerogative is not enough then how much would this cost? 

The small idea for a big society is this. What about a charitable organisation run through a website where: 

A. You get people to make suggestions for ideas as to both regulation and tax.

B. The people who come up with the best ideas for regulations and taxes that are then enacted win a prize. 

C. Prizes are cash prizes and cash is donated by the very banks that will be regulated and taxed. The same banks maybe who sponsored the G20 summit this week? There seems to be plenty of them sponsoring that collection of geniuses.

D. Ideas can be posted and then crowd sourced to be cleaned up prior to being voted on and put forward to 

a. the treasury?

b. the IMF (who would then need to be the worldwide regulator and collector of these taxes.

Would this idea only work on a worldwide scale? Maybe. What if the countries who decided that their financial services industry didn't need to comply then then lost IMF support and had sanctions implied by the UN? Let's take away our governments' desire to outbid each other with "loosest regulations wins" invitations to financial institutions.

Small idea for a big society.......

Thoughts?

Anyone want to help me formulate this idea a little more?

Anyone working for a financial institution that might like to sponsor the idea with time or money?