UK comedy director Richard Curtis - partly responsible for the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign - has teamed up with Bill Nighy to promote a Tobin Tax, a tax on financial speculation. While set at a very low rate - 0.05% of each transaction - due to the enormous volume of speculative transactions, it could conceivably raise hundreds of billions of pounds a year to support public services and global development, while curbing a parasitical and economically damaging activity. Plus, it sticks it to the bankers, whose clever little schemes to move money round in circles almost destroyed the global economy.
This is a fundamentally good idea, and I'd love to see it implemented. if you'd like to learn more, go to http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/.