Comments (6)

• Fred

  Speaking of the government, I heard politicians explaining the need for the carbon cap and trade bill, how it would create jobs and let America catch up with Europe. Now maybe they meant catch down. Recently, America has made great strides in catching down to Europe and the carbon cap and trade bill may just ensure such an outcome.

  Hearing them speak also made me wonder why the computer industry never recieved the same treatment from the government and why a subsidy bill to replace 3 year old computers was never passed. It also dawned on me that consumers wanted the products of the computer industry.

  Published: June 26, 2009 9:32 PM

• shane

  So, does this mean cap-trade is dead after all??

  Published: June 27, 2009 12:36 PM

• Chris

  @Shane
  No, it is alive and well. It passed the House on Friday afternoon something like 219-212. Hopefully the Senate will shoot it down, but I doubt they will. I don't expect to see the US having much of an economy left in the next 5-10 years.

  Published: June 27, 2009 9:58 PM

• shane

  @ Chris,

  But, isn't cap'n trade a gigantic fraud fueled by the economic downturn? Aren't they trying to create an artificial derivitives market to re-inflate the bubble? I just don't understand why the gubmend would be cracking down on people who do the exact same thing the gubmend does.....:)

  Published: June 28, 2009 10:39 AM

• BioTube

  I bet whole hoards of thieves and murderers ask themselves the same question.

  Published: June 28, 2009 1:07 PM

• Chirs

  @Shane
  Sir: hopefully you're being sarcastic with that remark, but with words alone it's hard to discern seriousness from sarcasm as the usual bodily and tonal signals are missing. As such, I'll presume that you were being serious, but assume you were not attempting to be insulting with the misspellings and generally apparent condescension.

  Cap and Trade is not, per se, a fraud "fueled by the economic downturn." Though cap and trade is largely fraudulent in its basis, the assertion that it is fueled by the economic downturn is, imo, a confusion of correlation with causation. The idea has been alive for a number of years, well proceeding the current economic downturn. Personally, I think it is more a matter that the people who desire cap and trade think that they now have a sufficient majority to get it through Congress and a president who is favorable to the idea.

  As for the government desiring to create an artificial derivatives market, I can't answer that, and I refuse to do so. I know little about derivatives (until about an hour ago, I thought a derivative was a method of finding the rate of change in a mathematical function - short definition), so for me to accuse the government of attempting to start such an artificial market would be talking out of my rear end. At the moment I don't have the time to research derivatives in detail, so I will leave that up to people with greater expertise than I to deal with until I have researched it in detail and merely say that I suppose it's possible.

  Personally, I have other reasons for not liking cap and trade. I know a lot of people personally for whom the $175 (I will use the CBO's numbers, even though I trust them about as far as I can throw them) difference in energy costs could very well mean the difference between a roof over their heads and homelessness. Furthermore, I know people (myself to be amongst them in the next few months to a year) whose businesses are reliant upon servers which draw large amounts of electrical power. Those businesses will find their costs drastically increased by any system which makes energy more expensive - as cap and trade does, even by the government's own admissions. For those people, that additional cost could very well spell the failure of their businesses.

  (This is not even to mention the fact that I seriously doubt that the CO2 emission targets of the act(s) in question are even remotely possible.)

  Published: June 28, 2009 5:55 PM