Here Comes Cap and Trade!!

The financial meltdown has affected all of us this past year. Most folks, like you and me, don’t really understand the complexities of the securities collapse that caused the problem. Terms like “mark to market, credit default swaps, securitized financial instruments, collateralized debt instruments, bucket shops, and derivatives,” sound scary, and they are. But do any of you really have a clue what they mean? Probably not! These are pieces of paper upon which trillions of dollars exchanged hands, the value of which wasn’t known then, and isn’t known now; hence the current problems. The accountants can’t figure out what they are worth, because they are just pieces of paper.

These pieces of paper that no one, including our government officials, understands, have caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, and has bankrupted some of the most respected companies in our country. Yet, the nation is once again about to embark on another financial fantasy called “Cap and Trade.” As the pitchman said: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!!”

Start with a scientific theory trying to explain the ebb and flow of temperatures of the earth. Completely ignore the historic rise and fall of temperatures through several ice ages and the converse warming periods over ions of time. Completely ignore the fact that the temperature of the earth is actually going down right now. Completely ignore the fact that just 20 years ago these same scientists were claiming the earth was going into a deep freeze.

Who cares? It has looked a little toasty these past 20 years, and something must be causing it. It must be us!!!! The dreaded greenhouse gases from our sinful and immoral lifestyle are turning the earth into a greenhouse. Coastal cities from New York to Miami are going to sink under an ever rising ocean. Our plains will turn into deserts. Repent. The end of the world is at hand.

Hogwash. Slowly but surely scientists have quietly been moderating their opinions, pointing to the correlation between temperatures and sun spot activity over hundreds of years. The correlation is uncanny. Story after story has been popping up on the news of scientists censored and fired from their jobs because they are concluding that global warming is myth, and may be better handled, if it exists at all, through other means such as management of the rain forests.

In the meantime, the news media and politicians anxious to control your lives have turned junk science into a political movement. Global warming is now unquestionable and irrefutable conventional wisdom. You know, like the earth is the center of the universe, or the earth is flat. Question it, you will run up against the equivalent of the Salem witch trials.

So, who stands to gain from all of this? The government for one, who will sit in grand judgment as to what is acceptable and what is not in terms of who benefits from energy usage. Rest assured, it will not be you.

Even scarier are those who are entering into the Cap and Trade business. The government will decide how much emitted carbon dioxide is too much…and then tell businesses to fix it. If you are a business and cannot meet the standard, you will be forced to buy “carbon credits” from those businesses who have been able to come in under their allotment. If there are insufficient businesses to buy from, they you can buy your credits from the government. Of course, nobody has a clue as to how these allotments are to be made. And of course we don’t know how much these so called carbon credits will be worth.

Just like those scary securities that have decimated our economy this past year, these carbon credits will be subject to the “market’, and speculators. In effect, those who deal in these things will be trading “air”. Just wait for the accountants, who currently can’t value mortgage backed securities or credit default swaps in any meaningful way, start trying to value air. It will be a nightmare. And those who deal in these things will make billions of dollars, at your expense. At the end of the day, someone has to pay. That someone is you.

This is a non-partisan issue. Both Barack Obama and John McCain have bought into this global warming puffery, and are supporters of Cap and Trade. Beware!! Don’t let the government shove this down your throat as you will be the ones who end up paying. You should insist on facts and figures relating to global warming rather than just accept it as fact. Today's conventional wisdom will turn into yesterday's "the earth is flat."