Robin Hood may have lacked ambition

The title page of Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.

Courageous MEPs are highlighting the lack of ambition in current legislative proposals for financial transaction taxes, calling them “hopelessly inadequate for tackling the obscene antisocial speculation around the world by giant hedge funds and so-called ‘prestigious’ banks.”

They seek more radical solutions: “We need to take public ownership and democratic control of these hedge funds and major banks in order to use their massive resources for investment that will end poverty and benefit society, rather than destroying society for private greed. Robin Hood didn’t change anything really. He should have thrown the Sheriff of Nottingham out of his castle and moved everyone else in.”