financial transaction tax

addchild 

Its hard to guess about something that doesn't exist at all right now, but exchanges wouldn't be moving offshore to save themselves a ftt, they would do it to save their customers a ftt, and in turn, their business. Again its only speculation but I'd imagine traders who are effected would likely end up being the sole US employee of a shell company in whatever tax preferential country the exchanges land in. So the government would get theirs, but it would just be taxes on income.

Some proposals I've seen have included splitting the FTT between the trader and the exchange. Either way, not much we can do about it aside from hope that if/when it happens it is reasonable.