I'll be the first to admit that I know nothing about this, and economics is certainly not my field of expertise, much less interest, but I still found this concept intriguing.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYtNwmXKIvM"]YouTube- The Banker[/ame]

In a nutshell, the idea is that all non-consumer banking transactions would have a small tax placed on them. The video goes a little extreme about it saving the world and bringing dead babies back to life, creating world peace and all that jazz, but in spite of that, I think it's a genuinely good idea.

Part of my thinking on this came from reading an article about oligarchies. It's really just an opinion piece by some poli-sci professor, but he was discussing the nature of oligarchies and how his view of an oligarchy is " a group of social elites with sufficient power (economic, political, religious, etc.) to destroy the society by their actions. In other words, if society can function without you, you are not part of the club." (http://www.ginandtacos.com/2010/04/01/too-big-to-fail/). He then said that the real oligarchies around America are the banking and financial institutions. We're at the point where they can fail, point out it will ruin the economy and have the government bail them out with no strings attached to the money.

The issue, though, isn't the bailout, it's more: what are effective means of shifting the balance of power away from financial institutions and back the to government? Is this even a good idea? What kind of impact would the Robin Hood Tax have?