World View: Banksters Seek to Save Europe's Carbon Trading System

World View: Banksters Seek to Save Europe's Carbon Trading System

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

  • Banksters desperately seek to save Europe’s carbon trading system
  • Libor-rigging banks face rash of lawsuits
  • Japan’s economy may be in an inescapable decline
  • Poor health and draft-dodging plague Russia’s army

Banksters desperately seek to save Europe’s carbon trading system

Smokestacks in China
Smokestacks in China

The plan that was supposed to save the world from climate changedisaster, Europe’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), which allowscompanies to pay for carbon credits that permit the company to emitcarbon, is close to collapse. The whole program was poorly designedin the first place by climate change fanatics, and Europe’s financialcrisis has made carbon credits so cheap that no one has any realincentive to cut back, even if they wanted to.

I’ve taken no position on whether climate change is occurring orwhether human beings caused it. Some people claim it’s “provenscience,” but I’ve read other articles that claim that global warmingended ten years ago, and that as the Arctic has gotten warmer, theAntarctic has gotten equivalently colder. I also take note of thefact that climate change fanatics never mention the Antarctic.

Whether global warming is occurring or not, or whether humans causedit or not, is irrelevant to the discussion. There is no technology onthe horizon that’s going to reduce carbon emissions. It’s just ascam. Americans and Europeans will not give up their cars, China willnot give up its massively growing collection of coal mines, andhundreds of millions of Africans and Indians will not give up cookingwith their carbon-emitting charcoal stoves.

Basically, the climate change fanatics are like someone who, acentury ago, was worried that the world was going to be covered withhorse crap, and horse crap credits should be traded to eliminate theproblem. The automobile came along to solve the horse crap problem,and it would have come along with or without horse crap credits.

I wrote about this subject in December 2007 ( “UN Climate Change conference appears to be ending in farce”)

At that time, I wrote a lengthy profile about a bankster named LouisRedshaw, head of environmental trading at Barclay’s Bank. This wasjust after the global credit crunch had begun, and the subprime realestate market was crashing. I quoted Redshaw at the time as sayingthat carbon credit derivatives were going to make banks a lot moremoney than the subprime mortgage derivatives had. Even in 2007, itwas pretty obvious that climate change was a financial scam, and thatthe people driving it were banksters like Redshaw, and wealthy carbonemitters like Al Gore and the people lounging in air-conditionedconference rooms in Bali, attending a climate change conference. Itwas all pretty sickening then, but it’s even more sickening now.

I quoted an article as saying:

“Fans reckon trading volumes will soon be worthmany billions of pounds per year. James Cameron at the investmentboutique Climate Change Capital said: “I think this is likely toget bigger than the interest-rate-swaps market within 10 to 15years, particularly once America joins in.” …

Louis Redshaw at Barclays Capital said: “We were the firstBritish bank involved and are now the biggest bankingparticipant. We handle transactions that are many multiples of thestandard market size of 10,000 tonnes. A million-tonne transactionis not out of the question.”

Now we can connect a couple of dots to see how sickening this all is.

Interest-rate swaps are a market with over $300 trillion dollars insynthetic security assets. Cameron and Redshaw want to create acarbon trading market that was bigger than that.

BUT, we learned a few months ago that Barclays bank was at the heartof a scheme, from 2004-2008, to manipulate Libor interest rates, andthis affects the values of interest rate swaps. (See “17-Jul-12 World View — Barclay’s COO admits having rigged Libor, thought it was OK” from July.)

So at the time that banksters like Redshaw at Barclays were planningto use carbon trading to create a market bigger than interest rateswaps, the rigging of interest rate swaps was at its peak, and thebanksters at Barclays would have known this. They knew that Barclaysbank was already defrauding the public by using Libor to manipulatethe prices of interest rates swaps, and they almost assuredly weredreaming up a similar scheme to defraud the public using syntheticsecurities based on carbon credits.

This is why I keep saying: The same Generation-X banksters that causedthe financial crisis are still in the same jobs, finding new ways todefraud people, and Generation-X prosecutors refuse to investigate andprosecute other Gen-Xers, even for obvious crimes. After all theseyears, not a single bankster has gone to jail for the financialcrisis, even though the evidence of massive, purposeful fraud isabundant. These leaves the banksters free to create new and biggerfrauds, secure in the knowledge that they won’t be prosecuted.

So, the European politicians and banksters are now looking for ways tosalvage the collapsing Emissions Trading System (ETS), and they planto do it with harsh new emission control regulations that will stiflebusiness further, at a time when Europe’s economy is collapsing. Doeseveryone understand why I call these people idiots? Spiegel

Libor-rigging banks face rash of lawsuits

In a case coming to court in London on Monday, Guardian Care Homes isclaiming that they were defrauded by Barclays Bank, when the bank soldGuardian interest rate swaps during the credit bubble. Interest rateswaps are like insurance policies that pay off if interest rates gotoo far up or down. They’re used by companies that want to protectthemselves from losing money if that happens. Interest rates swapsare priced by an algorithm that includes the Libor rate, and Barclaysbank admitted in July that it had fraudulently manipulated the Liborrate from 2004-2008 for its own gain. (See “17-Jul-12 World View — Barclay’s COO admits having rigged Libor, thought it was OK” from July.) Guardian issuing Barclays for 12 million pounds, claiming that it lost that muchmoney from Barclays’ Libor rigging. There are $300 trillion ininterest rate swap contracts in portfolios around the world, and someexperts claim that $230 trillion of those swaps were tied to Libor.All of those contracts are suspect because of Libor rigging byBarclays and 16 other banks. Other lawsuits are still in the planningstages, and some estimates are that banks will pay $6 billion indamages collectively. But the fallout goes beyond litigation costs.London’s banks in particular have had to set aside billions of poundsto cover potential customer claims, and London’s reputation has beenseverely damaged as a world financial center. Bloomberg

Japan’s economy may be in an inescapable decline

With Japan’s economy continuing to worsen, mainstream economists areincreasingly accepting the belief that Japan is not just in aprolonged slump but also in an inescapable decline. Frankly, I hadn’texpected this. Japan had a generational stock market and real estatecrash in 1990, following a huge bubble throughout the 1980s, and Iwould have thought that by this time Japan would have recovered fromit. (See “Japan’s real estate crash may finally end after 16 years” from 2007.)

But maybe I should have expected this result. After all, America’sstock market crash began in 1929, and there was no full recovery untilthe early 1950s — at least partially because of World War II. Soperhaps a country can’t recover from a generational financial crisiswithout a generational crisis war. At any rate, Japan has the highestamount of debt of any country in the world in relation to GDP –public debt is 229% of GDP. For comparison, Greece is ranked secondat 163%, and the United States is at 103%. And Japan is headed for amajor war with China. Washington Post

Poor health and draft-dodging plague Russia’s army

20-60% of Russia’s teenagers, male and female, are unfit for militaryduty because of reproductive illnesses, stemming from harmful habits,abortions, serious illnesses, and communicable diseases. This is oneof the reasons being blamed for the failure of a four-year program tomodernize Russia’s armed forces. As a result, Russia is being forcedto draft people as old as 27 years. Even so, large scaledraft-dodging among the recruitment pool means that the army is farfrom its staffing goals, with the “permanent readiness” brigades maybe undermanned by at least 30 percent. Jamestown and Healthy Russian Foundation

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