Philippe Douste-Blazy, the Chairman of Unitaid and the former French foreign minister writes in an op-ed in the New York Times about how the world could come up with the funds to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals
The one untapped source that could easily provide the amount of money needed is the foreign currency market, which handles almost $800 trillion in trades annually, all of which is untaxed. A tiny levy of 0.005 percent on transactions involving the world’s most traded currencies — the dollar, the euro, the pound and the yen — would raise more than $33 billion annually for development, while not hurting the market or affecting the average international traveler.