BIS Transaction Data for 2011: Roughly $3 quadrillion in the USA

In my final post based on the dataset provided by the Bank for International Settlements Preliminary results for 2011 ("Statistics on payment, clearing and settlement systems"), I would like to provide an update on the figures for the USA. Here they are.

As you can see, the numbers are really very close to those that were reported in 2010 - with a total that is very close to €3 quadrillion (a 3 with 15 zeros), despite the fact that the figures for "Card payments" are currently "nav" (not available). We can probably assume another $4 trillion there.

What I find very interesting here is that this total is something like 1200 times larger than the total tax revenue of the US government.That means that the US government could probably abolish all the existing taxes and replace the whole lot with a universal financial transaction tax of only about 0.1%.

It's truly tragic that Andrew VanHooks TRAN$ACTION  TAX website in the US still only has 110 "likes" (they are hoping for a million). Barack Obama - are you listening?? Surely, introducing a financial transaction tax in the US has to be a No-brainer. Who would not vote for getting rid of all taxes and just paying a fraction of one percent on all electronic transactions? Even the Tea-party should be salivating at the prospect.

I also note that the €3 quadrillion number is also roughly 20 times the entire US governments national debt (currently standing at around $15 trillion). How long would it take to pay off the whole sum using a Financial Transaction Tax?