Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth

December 08, 2009

Tsunami Warning: Carbon Capitalists Warming to Climate Market Using Derivatives

You think we've had a financial crisis? Imagine what will happen when carbon futures will become the trade center for derivatives. Everything having to do with fossil fuels, most of our energy will be speculated to the unwitting investor. When another $2 trillion dollar bubble collapses, will the world economy survive? It seems doubtful.


Carbon Capitalists Warming to Climate Market Using Derivatives - Bloomberg.com

WASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 13:  Hedge fund manager ...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

"Michelle Chan, a senior policy analyst in San Francisco for Friends of the Earth, isn’t convinced.

“Should we really create a new $2 trillion market when we haven’t yet finished the job of revamping and testing new financial regulation?” she asks. Chan says that, given their recent history, the banks’ ability to turn climate change into a new commodities market should be curbed.

“What we have just been woken up to in the credit crisis -- to a jarring and shocking degree -- is what happens in the real world,” she says.

Even George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund operator, says money managers would find ways to manipulate cap-and-trade markets. “The system can be gamed,” Soros, 79, remarked at a London School of Economics seminar in July. “That’s why financial types like me like it -- because there are financial opportunities.”

Masters says U.S. carbon markets should be transparent and regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Standardized derivatives contracts -- securities that can be bought and sold by anyone -- should be traded on exchanges or centrally cleared, she says. The British-born Masters, who has an economics degree from Cambridge University, took over JPMorgan’s commodities business in 2007."



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