Reuters has been busy on the carbon emissions front, retailing another delightful story which should bring tears – of frustration – as it confronts the total ineptitude of the EU's grandiose plans to save the planet. European factories, the agency tells us, "are cashing in on an unexpected benefit from wilting output, selling surplus carbon emissions permits worth about €1 billion to raise funds on the carbon market."

View full article here

It reminds of that old but truthful saying, The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions.

Deutsche Bank has a “carbon analyst”?

That a major bank would need such staffing confirms that we have departed the real world and are now living in a fantasy realm.


But I take issue with the Carbon Analyst’s view that this smart trade by steel and cement producers is somehow abusing the system. The underlying intent is to reduce the use of the demon carbon, any expense that chokes off productivity and bleeds productive industry - and thereby the human economy - fulfils this goal, even if needless and indirect. A reduction in productivity with less profit means a loss in consumption somewhere, all good, less carbon all around. The point is that someone, somewhere is paying a needless tax, this is success, it will get more expensive soon enough.

The steel and cement producers participating as willing sellers are also locking in and habituating their involvement, and validating the underlying dogma of carbon reduction. Once the economy recovers, or the "carbon reduction targets" increase, the same steel and cement producers have no grounds to complain as they were happy with the scheme when it brought them a profit, further legitimizing an insane trade that should not exist.

When the rule of unintended results boots the EU in the goolies, I rejoice with splendiforous tumult.

If I was God, I too would be royally pissed off listening to the likes of the Great Moonbat, or the Reverend Al Bore banging on about how they can change the World, that I built.

Our only problem is that God deals in infinity, so he is likely to keep makeing fools of them for an awfully long time, which means we may have to suffer them for a lot longer yet.

When carbon emmission rights got a price, they turned into an asset. When companies dutifully listed these assets in their activa, greenies in Germany started crying that thes companies had enriched themselves at the cost of consumers! If the planners of cap and trade could not foresee this - what can they see at all? One wonders not.

Now that we have trade in carbon indulgences, I hope we'll soon see relics of the enviro saints.

The object of cap and trade is to provide a market for those people to play in. You know, the same people who recently brought us all such a triumph in mortgage trading. At least a mortgage is backed by something, you only lose part of the value if it flops. Carbon credits are more like, say, tulips. They have no intrinsic value. If (when) the market flops, and you're stuck with the right to burn carbon in a world where nobody pays any attention to their right to burn but burns anyway, you can't turn that position into anything of value.

The trader people have managed to convince government the world over that CaT is better than tax. They may be right, but in their eyes the important thing is nobody gets to dip their beak in a plain tax.

No, don't think for a minute that I favour a tax, I am a denier.

I`ve seen something of this like before, a permit system for a particular way of trading (and the semi black market exchanges of them.).
This often means that the companies recieving them feel favoured, and this will go on for ever. Unfortunately they get used to trading in a rigged market and dont see the whole picture. Mostly they just compare themselves with their fellow nationals ( they wont have a European perspective on this ) and watch that they aren`t given short by the national bureacrats compared to the other companies within their countries borders.
Eventually they are overcome because they didn`t see that the rigged market was ultimately rigged against them.

"Carbon credits are more like, say, tulips. They have no intrinsic value."

Tulips are most useful.You can give them to your granny or put them on her grave if the cold gets her.They look nice in the garden and add a little colour to the dark world Gordon Brown presides over.So come on,give tulips a break. Carbon credits are like politicians,neither use nor ornament.

How very sensible of Deutsche Bank to employ a Carbon Analyst. If in/tangible assets, no matter how tulip-like, can be traded...and a few Reichbucks can be made on the back of the idiocy...DB may well be a better choice than, e.g. Barclays....which probably can't afford an analyst anyway.