Sunday, November 09, 2008

Memo to T-Paw, Kate Knuth, The One, Etc.

Before you start crafting your Brave New World carbon emissions cap-and-trade scheme, think hard about what you are doing. And read this piece from Canada's National Post. If author Norman Solomon is right, carbon could become a de facto currency. And a very volatile one. If you think the mortgage-backed securities and other Byzantine financial instruments that Wall Street conjured were complicated, just imagine what happens when you try to securitize carbon.

(h/t: Instapundit)

1 comment:

Right Hook said...

The economic collapse could be potentially worse than the mortgage crisis. At least the mortgages had a commodity of real value involved. If a property gets foreclosed the property still has value and someone ends up owing it.

In the case of carbon trading, carbon credits are a mythical store of value - there is no tangible value to industry or business other than to buy government permission Unfortunately these credits will consume real capital, jobs, and energy output and when the "market" tanks due to the accompanying regulatory morass the real goods and services tied to the ownership of credits will disappear into thin (but ostensibly cleaner) air as producers will be hammered by both economics and the force of law.

This is indeed a dangerous road to go down. There is no market involved here. It is strictly a system where government picks winners and losers, and the government's track record is not very good.