The best way to cut carbon pollution is to make up to 1000 of our biggest polluters pay for every tonne of carbon pollution they generate. Not households. Not small businesses. Just the top 1000 polluters. We know some industries will pass some of these costs onto consumers, which is why we will give more than half of the money raised back to families who need the most help with their cost of living.
Leading property industry spruiker Christopher Joye has written an insightful blog post today concerning Malcolm Turnbull, and the present media focus on possible divisions within the Liberal Party.
It’s worth taking close note of Chris’ view on this.
Chris Joye is in a very good position to know something of the way Malcolm Turnbull thinks. The pair go back a long way. They were former associates at Goldman Sachs Australia. Turnbull later chaired the Howard Government’s Home Ownership Task Force, alongside lead author Chris Joye.
After Malcolm Turnbull lost the leadership of the Liberal Party, in December 2009 it was Chris Joye singing Turnbull’s praises in offering support for the idea of a Turnbull-led third party to split the Liberal vote:
Chris Joye, a leading investment banker and former professional colleague of Mr Turnbull’s who also worked with him at Goldman Sachs and sat with him on the previous government’s Home Ownership Task Force, this week used his blog to promote the new party idea.
He said Mr Turnbull moved into politics for the right reasons and possesses “more care, love and passion for this country in his pinky than most of his political peers exude through their entire being”.
“Perhaps following this fracas the big fella will throw caution to the wind and found his own political party,” he said.
“I am thinking of the Australian Republican Party with an unconditional commitment to combating climate change and reinvigorating the dormant republican movement.
“Now that would be sure to split the Liberal Party vote.”
First, we take as given that Malcolm is very smart and highly strategic. The shenanigans in recent weeks were not just a random bull-in-a-china-shop episode. There was method to the supposed madness.
Chris goes on to outline what might be Malcolm’s assessment of his own political position, before moving on to considering his incentives for his present actions.
Which brings us to the key point in which I strongly disagree with Chris’s base premise:
Next, consider Malcolm’s incentives, which help shed light on his actions. Unlike almost all other politicians, Malcolm currently has nothing to lose. He is extremely wealthy, and can opt out of politics and pursue a life of leisure at his choosing.
Goldman Sachs’ “confidential settlement” made on Malcolm’s behalf, to save his hide in the $500 million HIH lawsuit, is the greatest incentive driving Malcolm Turnbull’s political career.
Chris Joye argues convincingly that what we are seeing now, with an ascendant Abbott and the Coalition outpolling the Labor/Greens on an anti-carbon trading policy platform, is Malcolm Turnbull embarking on a “kamikaze” run:
If he truly believes that it is in the best interests of both the nation and himself to lead the party, and have a shot at running the country, he has to create a catalysing event. It is too late for him to stealthily build support with the backbench. Most are now a lost cause. But time and human self-interest are on his side. It is over two years before the next election.
Malcolm’s most powerful solution is to go into Kamikaze mode and compel a ‘survivalist’ partyroom response. This is a risky strategy, but then Malcolm has what is known in financial markets as a “call-option-like” payoff function. He has a helluva lot of upside if he can pull it off. And if he does not, he has little to lose.
Chris’ most telling comment of all comes in closing:
An objective analysis would conclude that there is risk that the polling does not get much better than this. That, surprise, surprise, the party, with Malcolm’s prodding, cannibalises itself. The big fella once said to me, You capitalise on chaos.
A remarkably similar motto to the infamous Ordo Ab Chao.
Here’s the most basic analogy of guilt: Picture Goldman [Sachs] as a used car salesman. When it learned it had an inventory of lemons, rather than return those lemons to the manufacturers (lemon law in most states), it put those cars on promotion with very aggressive sales tactics.
Because Goldman Sachs is about to fingercuff humanity all over again.
The new “lemon” is carbon derivatives. And the “protection” – which Goldman has also invented – is ‘Death Derivatives’:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which bundled and sold billions of dollars of mortgage loans, now want to help investors bet on people’s deaths.
Pension funds sitting on more than $23 trillion of assets are buying insurance against the risk their members live longer than expected. Banks are looking to earn fees from packaging that risk into bonds and other securities to sell to investors.
Like any successful serial killer, Goldman has found a successful MO (method of operation). And simply refines and repeats it, over and over again.
Goldman Sachs crashed the global markets in 2008’s Global Financial Crisis, and made out like a bandit through the entire process. How? By creating toxic mortgage-backed securities (derivatives) and on-selling them to the world. That’s the front end of the ‘cuff.
On the rear end, Goldman knew its “lemon” mortgage-backed derivatives would explode, and set itself up to profit massively when it did. That’s ‘cuff #2:
Goldman should be tarred and feathered over the 2008 meltdown. Like others on Wall Street, Goldman had an active mortgage department designing, packaging, securitizing, promoting, and selling mortgage-backed securities and related synthetic derivatives. Goldman’s trading desk conceived, promoted, and sold various protection strategies as market maker, agent, and principal.
As the housing bubble got close to bursting, Goldman became enlightened sooner than other banks, partially from witnessing the “big short” strategies of its infamous hedge-fund client John Paulson.
The entire firm came around to believing the great mortgage bubble was a house of cards ready to collapse, based on delinquencies, no-doc loans, fraud, and more...
Goldman had two choices: discontinue the sale of junk-mortgage securities and alerting the government, media, public, their clients, and investors; or, keep it a secret, sell off junk-mortgage securities to investors, profit from the inevitable bursting of the bubble, and steal and even front-run part of Paulson’s trade.
Clearly, Goldman’s short (protection) trade was connected to clearing out their long trades (selling the lemons)…
Once Goldman had its “big short” trades on, it couldn’t wait for the payday, risking the market might recover. It knew marking down its own long portfolio of lemons could trigger the crisis and the huge short-trade payouts. Marking down the lemons lowered them for sale to investors and forced all other banks to do almost the same. Based on fair-value accounting rules, Goldman forced lower fire-sale marks on the industry which put some financial institutions out of business almost overnight. Which turned into another win, as Goldman had pre-purchased credit-default swaps to pay off on their competitors’ demise.
Having raped the USA (and much of the Western world) with their mortgage-backed derivatives bubble, Goldman has refined its MO, and now it has its sights set on the next target. The entire human race.
Fingercuff #1 is carbon trading. That’s the “lemon” being aggressively sold to the world, by Goldman’s handpicked used car salesmen like Malcolm Turnbull.
You know the sales pitch. “Pricing carbon” through carbon taxes / trading is “necessary”, to “save the planet”.
But carbon taxes/derivatives trading is a “lemon”, and it’s designed to do one thing. Kill you … slowly. Through ever-rising costs for everything. To warm your house. To buy food. Goldman gets richer, while you get poorer.
Fingercuff #2 is ‘death derivatives’. That’s the “protection” end.
But it’s no protection for you.
“Death derivatives” is a new form of “protection” sold by Goldman’s to superannuation funds, life insurance companies, “investors”, and speculators. Anyone who stands to gain, or lose, depending on when you die.
What most won’t notice – again – is that there’s a big hole in their “protection”.
And the hole is the serial killer who’s selling it:
What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain…
The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth — pure profit for rich individuals.
They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They’ve been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they’re preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.
Did you lose money – in your super fund, say – thanks to the Goldman-inspired GFC?
With the Carbon Tax, we’re about to get raped again.
But this time, it’s not just a question of money.
It really is a question of life and (premature) death.
If not, then what you’re about to learn may cause you to wish that you had never read this post.
Or the linked mainstream business news stories.
On April 6 last year, the leading advocate for CO2 emissions trading in Australia, Goldman Sachs’ Malcolm Turnbull, announced his retirement from politics, having lost the leadership of the Liberal Party over his dogged stance on an ETS.
At the time, Mr Turnbull indicated his desire to pursue business interests.
From SmartCompany.com.au:
Will Malcolm Turnbull Become Australia’s Most Prominent Angel Investor?
We all know just how keenly Malcolm Turnbull wants to see Australia with a carbon (dioxide) derivatives trading scheme.
So one wonders if he is also looking to become an “angel” of Goldman’s newest invention – “death derivatives”.
From Bloomberg one week ago, 17 May 2011:
Death Derivatives Emerge From Pension Risks of Living Too Long
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which bundled and sold billions of dollars of mortgage loans, now want to help investors bet on people’s deaths.
Pension funds sitting on more than $23 trillion of assets are buying insurance against the risk their members live longer than expected. Banks are looking to earn fees from packaging that risk into bonds and other securities to sell to investors.
There you have it.
To banksters, insurance companies, and superannuation fund managers, the possibility of your living “longer than expected” is considered a “risk“.
Nice.
And now, thanks to the sick, evil genius of global banksters like Goldman Sachs, this “risk” factor of you and your loved ones living longer than expected can be packaged up into a tradeable commodity.
A ‘death derivative’.
A new artificial “commodity” – exactly like “carbon permits” – that can be used to attract “investors” who want to place bets with despicable scumbag banksters like Goldman Sachs, on how long each securitised “pool” of human beings will live for.
“And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, for no one buys their merchandise anymore: merchandise of gold and silver … and bodies and souls of men.”
Shocked?
Maybe you should not be.
This latest bankster monstrosity comes from the very same people who, according to CEO Lloyd Blankfein, claim they are “doing god’s work”.
We have seen in “Compassion For Malcolm: He Just Wants His Balls Back”, that there is a little-known and very uncomfortable truth about the connection between Mr Turnbull and international investment bank Goldman Sachs.
We know too, that Mr Turnbull loves to get in early on new profit-making opportunities, as an “angel investor”.
Will he use some of it to become an angel of (Goldman’s) death derivatives?
Seems like a sound investment to me … if you’re a morally bankrupt prophet (profit) of global warming catastrophe, (ie), a merchant of death.
Think about it.
A carbon tax – the banksters’ foot-in-the-door on the way to an emissions trading scheme “in 3 to 5 years” – will drive up the cost of living. That is one of the key goals that global warming advocates will – only if pressured – sheepishly admit is the whole point of “putting a price on carbon”. To force citizens to alter their way of living, due directly to rising costs for everything.
What will be the ultimate effect?
Barnaby Joyce has said it well. More and more older Australians already stay in bed all day in winter, because they can’t afford the extra electricity to warm the house:
That’s right here in Australia, where we enjoy a naturally warm climate.
Can you imagine just how many elderly (and not so elderly) people will suffer physically in the future, when current record-high electricity prices double?
The effect of our allowing CO2 taxes / emissions trading to be enacted, is now very clear.
The cost of electricity will rise.
The cost of gas will rise.
The cost of food will rise.
The cost of water will rise.
The cost of clothing will rise.
The cost of transport will rise.
The cost of housing will rise.
Yes. The cost of everything will rise.
In due time.
But is all this just about ever-rising prices?
No.
It’s about the effect of ever-rising prices.
And what will be the effect?
The multi-decade trend of rising longevity in the Western world, will begin to reverse.
Older people – like your parents, and grandparents – will stop living longer.
They will start dying earlier than the insurance and superannuation industries’ models have been expecting.
Thanks to carbon dioxide derivatives trading, more and more human beings will die earlier and earlier than “investors” in death derivatives have estimated.
Superannuation fund managers, insurance companies, “investors” and speculators will find that they have made the wrong bet on average life expectancies.
Meaning – the banksters will first make a killing on the trade in carbon dioxide derivatives.
And then make another killing on the trade in their new ‘death derivatives’ too.
This is the ugly reality. There are people in this world who do not give a shit about you, or your little life.
They just want to profit from it.
In every way they can.
They don’t even “see” you … a wonderful, unique, and priceless individual human being.
They only see a vast herd of human cattle.
To be milked dry.
A huge herd of debt-laden cattle whose lives – and times of death – can be packaged together into different ‘risk’ ‘pools’ and ‘tranches’. Sliced and diced. Securitised. And traded on new “commodity” markets, for vast profits.
What you must also understand is this. These evil scum play The Long Game.
They’re patient bastards.
Don’t be fooled by politicians talk of “household compensation”. It is only for a limited time.
Don’t be fooled by politicians talk of a “low starting price” on carbon dioxide. That is only for a limited time too.
Don’t be fooled by politicians and “experts” pro/con arguments over the “merit” of a carbon tax, versus an emissions trading scheme. Both are intended to have the same effect.
Don’t be fooled by the “carbon tax”.
The banksters would prefer an emissions trading scheme from Day 1. But they are prepared to wait a few years to get what they really want, if opposition from the public means that the safer-sounding option of a “fixed price” carbon tax is needed as a wedge, to get things started.
Mind you, while they’re waiting for an ETS they are still keen to get their hands on those billions in carbon tax money from Day 1 too (see “Our ‘Squeeze Pop’ Carbon Bank“).
A “carbon tax” is the banksters’ foot in our front door.
Don’t be fooled by the merchants of death.
Stop the CO2 Tax.
Stop the banksters.
Please share this information with everyone you know, today.
Julia says today that she is playing “the long game” on carbon trading –
Julia Gillard has assured Labor MPs her government will run its full term, telling them she is playing “the long game” and predicting Tony Abbott’s popularity will fade as Labor programs begin to deliver on-the-ground benefits for voters.
He has also cut the price of carbon from $40 to $10 for the first year of the scheme.
From Nine News, May 4, 2010:
The federal government will delay the start of its carbon pollution reduction scheme by a year and could seek deeper cuts to emissions than originally planned.
This decision was a momentous decision for Australian politics.
Careers have risen and fallen as a result. More will.
Now consider.
Kevin Rudd’s big decision was kept so secret, that not even Peter Garrett, the government’s own Environmental Protection Minister, was told about it in advance.
From ABC News, June 5 2010:
Peter Garrett has admitted he was kept in the dark over the scrapping of the Federal Government’s Emissions Trading Scheme.
Now, let’s review the dates of news reports concerning Malcolm Turnbull’s announcement of (1) his decision to retire, and (2) his rapid change of mind.
Didn’t Rudd announce the oh-so-secret decision to delay the ETS three days later, on May 4?
Even the Environment Protection Minister Peter Garrett says he didn’t know about the decision until he read about it in the newspaper on May 4.
So, how could Malcolm Turnbull possibly have known about it before April 26, in order for the Herald Sun to publish their story saying that he was “seriously reconsidering” his retirement decision?
Malcolm allegedly changed his mind sometime in April … while “overseas” … because he was “spurred on” by Rudd’s decision to delay the ETS.
A secret decision, announced on May 4th.
I think it is abundantly clear what the real reason is for Malcolm’s change of mind:
Finally, it is interesting to note that many on the left of politics admire Malcolm Turnbull as a man of integrity, precisely because of his consistent strong stand on emissions trading. Malcolm Turnbull consistently polls better with Labor/Green voters on the question of Preferred PM, than he does with conservative voters.
In the interview mentioned above, Malcolm Turnbull was questioned about Tony Abbott’s famous Kerry O’Brien interview, where it is said that he “gaffed” regarding politicians and truth-telling.
This is what Malcolm had to say about it:
MONICA ATTARD: Have you ever in an unscripted moment said something that wasn’t the entire truth?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I believe that politicians should speak the truth all the time. Invariably there will be occasions when you make statements that are factually incorrect due to an error…
But then there’s the occasion when politicians will say things that are simply not true … That is something that I think should not happen. That’s a no-no. That’s a third rail that you shouldn’t touch.
MONICA ATTARD: And that’s not what Tony Abbott was doing though in relation to the taxation that he was being questioned upon?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I believe politicians and everybody for that matter should aim to be accurate and truthful in what they say at all times.
Now you can be truthful and inaccurate but what you shouldn’t be doing at any time is saying things that are untrue…
Malcolm Turnbull has again managed to anger his colleagues, thanks to his comments on the Coalition’s Direct Action climate policy on Lateline this week.
I for one think that we could all show a little more compassion for Malcolm’s eunuchly uncomfortable position.
You see, there is plenty of evidence to strongly suggest the – somewhat embarrassing – true reason why Malcolm Turnbull so fervently believes that an emissions trading scheme is the best way to address global warming.
Simply take the time to review the history of the HIH collapse in March 2001.
Consider the highly questionable role that Goldman Sachs Australia – of whom Malcolm Turnbull was chairman at the time – had to play in this, the biggest corporate failure in Australian history:
Consider only a few years after the collapse of HIH, even as those legal proceedings were being prepared, Malcolm Turnbull’s (again, questionable) takeover from Peter King as the Liberal candidate for the seat of Wentworth gave him a ready-made entrance into Parliament in 2004.
Consider his rapid elevation to the key role of … Environment Minister. Followed by the big push for the Howard Government to adopt an ETS.
Consider the revelation only a short time later that then Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull was to be spared from appearing in court as a defendant in that $450+ million lawsuit. Why?
Because his former employer Goldman Sachs had made a “confidential” settlement on his behalf:
Most importantly, consider which massive international banking power has been behind all the great market bubbles in modern history – and is again behind the global drive for a new derivatives-based trading bubble, the likes of which the world has never seen:
Goldman Sachs is based in New York, with “tentacles” all over the world.
It hardly takes a rocket scientist to put two + two together.
Malcolm Turnbull, the former Goldman Sachs Australia chairman, named co-defendant in a $450+ million lawsuit, and beneficiary of a “confidential” settlement made on his behalf by his former employer, believes so strongly in Australia having an emissions trading scheme for a very good reason indeed.
But I personally harbour the gravest of doubts that “saving the planet” has anything whatsoever to do with it…
An independent carbon bank, similar to the Reserve Bank, should be set up to oversee a carbon price and investment in clean technology, the peak renewable energy lobby says.
The Clean Energy Council will today release a discussion paper proposing the carbon bank, which it says could be allowed to borrow money to invest in renewable energy projects against the future revenue of Labor’s proposed carbon tax and emissions trading scheme.
Hmmmmm.
An “independent” carbon bank.
Trading in … what you breathe out.
Borrowing … and “investing” … against the future government tax revenue.
In other words, the government … meaning taxpayers … the guarantor for any losses on those “investments”.
And derivatives, well, they’re safe-as-houses too.
After all, the mortgage-backed derivatives market that blew up America is only a tiddling little market.
So there’s clearly no cause for concern about yet another bankster-driven scheme, to blow up a global, air-backed derivatives bubble:
To give an idea of the vast disconnect between our banks’ “Assets” (66% of which are loans), and their exposure to OTC derivatives, the following chart shows their total Assets – blue line – versus a red line of total Off-Balance Sheet “business” (click to enlarge):
$2.66 Trillion in "Assets" versus $15 Trillion in Off-Balance Sheet "Business"
They say that the main gimmick used to promote Hubba Bubba is that it is less sticky than other brands of bubble gum, and so burst bubbles are easier to peel from your skin.
No worries then.
Sure, we are going to get squeezed dry.
But there’ll be no needing to go shave our heads or rend our clothes when the biggest bubble ever goes POP!
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