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A Tobin tax is a tax on all trade of currency across borders.
The first idea that it could be useful came from the economist James Tobin. The tax is meant to put a penalty on short-term speculation in currencies. The proposed tax rate would be low, between 0.1% to 0.25%.
On August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon told that it would no longer be possible to change the US dollar to gold, so ended the Bretton Woods system. Tobin suggested a new system for international currency stability, and proposed that such a system include a charge on foreign-exchange transactions. Professor Tobin later received a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1981.
The idea was nearly forgotten for more than 20 years. In 1997 Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, started the debate around the Tobin tax again with an editorial titled "Disarming the markets". Ramonet proposed to create an association for the introduction of this tax, which was named ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens). The tax has then become an issue of the antiglobalization movement and a matter of discussion not only behind academic institutions but even in the streets and in parliaments around the world, such as the UK and France.