The boss of the UK’s financial watchdog has said he backs a new tax on banks as a means to prevent excess bonus payments in the industry.

Lord Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), told Prospect magazine much of the activities of the City of London were “socially useless”.

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He said such a tax would be “a nice sensible revenue source for funding global public goods”. BBC.

Now I believe this is a good idea – ideally I’d like to see the tax reward those who hold shares for longer – perhaps with those holding shares for 10-years or more being tax exempt and those holding shares for less than a year paying and additional 50%. Of course the city is more than straight share trading and I suspect bankers will find ways of circumventing the rules – which is a shame as encouraging investors to hold long term investments certainly strikes me as appealing – although I’m no expert – perhaps some can enlighten me.