History tells us that, unless you are in particularly bubbly times, this will require someone to make the full commitment and redistribute it amongst the dispersed investors. That's what a bank does.
It's not just risk analysis, it's credible risk-taking-coordination (the important word being "credible": banks are about trust - the fact that many banks abused the trust of many investors lately does not change the fact that they are needed as institututions able to trustfully assess, collate and distribute risk)
You, of all people, working in Iran: have you never wondered why the Iranians could not do LNG? It's not that they don't have the technology, or cannot buy it. It's that they are not seen as a credible counterparty to the massive contracts that are needed to underpin the industrial chain.
I do banking at its simplest, not at its most complex. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Sounds a bit like the Iranian Oil Bourse. Still a figment of imagination.
And what's unreliable about Qatar?
Come to that, when did Iran last default on a contract?
If gas producer and consumer states get behind it, it could happen. If they don't, it won't.
As for the Iran Oil Bourse, what happened to that was nothing to do with me. The Oil Ministry didn't want it, so it never happened - or rather it did happen as a spreadsheet registering the odd petrochemical transaction.
Indeed, I never recommended an Iran Oil Bourse in the first place, but a Middle East Exchange.
Fair enough. So, with regard to our one wind turbine, probably in the middle of a much larger project, could we say that we would join any such scheme as soon as the states or, short of that, regional authority would create the market, without making it a pre-condition that WE would create it for the one turbine to exist? "The womb that spawned that thing is fertile yet"
Paul Spencer might have a pragmatic LLC-based proposition in Washington state at some point. From what I know of Paul, it should work in the real world.
It may be that I'll have a pilot scheme at some point, too, and if so I'll let people know. As I said elsewhere, I think that if a Community Energy Partnership actually works, then it will be possible to link such initiatives together, and next thing you know, you've got a networked energy market developing...
But these are entirely independent of - but possibly complementary to - what governments decide they need to do.
It's a strange coincidence that I had planned some months ago to get back into the LLC/co-op discussion this November - after the U.S. election dust had settled and a house-building project was completed (this weekend). Maybe the wind turbine project will fit in. paul spencer
Both Russia and Iran have had revolutions in the last 30 years. Iran is led by a theocracy that will end in bloodshed. Russia is held by a strongman oligarchy that will also likely end in yet another revolution.
You want to make 30-40 year bets in those places without a serious front loading of your returns, be my guest.
Please elaborate. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
I agree with that entirely. I agree that banks have a valuable role doing exactly what you say.
But it is not necessary for them to be credit intermediaries to provide that service.
You have never answered this point. Why is it necessary for banks to create credit?
Jerome a Paris:
Sorry, but you are wrong on this.
The two principal reasons why they have had problems making progress with big projects are:
(a) International oil and gas companies hate Iranian contractual terms - and I'm not surprised;
(b) without exception, Western banks have been scared off by the US.
Companies need to demonstrate to shareholders that they "own" rights to oil; whereas politicians (particularly in Iran - UK politicians long ago sold the family silver) need to demonstrate to voters that they own the rights.
How this contradiction is bridged - or not - is a matter of contractual terms.
But it is not necessary for them to be credit intermediaries to provide that service. You have never answered this point. Why is it necessary for banks to create credit?
Because otherwise it does not happen, as reality shows. And that is not because of any conspiracy, but because it is a task by many orders of magnitude more complex to coordinate the risk profiles of many different parties than it is for one party to set the terms it finds acceptable, do the deal and then either keep the risk or syndicate it on an "as is" basis to others.
One version works - has for centuries, in fact; the other does not work at all.
The two principal reasons why they have had problems making progress with big projects are: (a) International oil and gas companies hate Iranian contractual terms - and I'm not surprised; (b) without exception, Western banks have been scared off by the US.
(a) well, if you want to sell something, you have to provide terms that attract some buyers. What you don't understand is that gas is not a business where you sell molecules of methane, it's a business where you sell long term flows of gas. Iran is not a credible provider of long terms flows of gas. The terms you refer to, the Buy-Backs, are indeed not liked by the oil companies but they are not the obstacle - South Pars 2&3 happened on that basis and more could have if the Iranians did not always change their mind on what they want.
(b) may be true today, but it certainly wasn't in 1999-2002 when the Iranians could easily have financeda project with serious contracts. They were never willing to provide serious contracts.
Blaming the oil companies and the banks is lazy and stupid. Oher countries did LNG at the same time (Qatar with ExxonMobil, Egypt with BG, Yemen with Total and I'm pretty sure they are not feeling bad or exploited about these deals, which are extremely favorable to them. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
That is a valid justification for credit intermediation, and is exactly parallel to the justification for risk intermediation by clearing houses.
Btw why the reference to a conspiracy?
Indeed it did work after a fashion - with mathematically inevitable booms and busts -for centuries.
But it's not working now, is it?
And IMHO the Internet enables an entirely new option which makes banks as credit intermediaries redundant.
What you don't understand is that gas is not a business where you sell molecules of methane, it's a business where you sell long term flows of gas.
Excuse me?
Upon what basis do you say that I do or do not understand the gas market?
Blaming the oil companies and the banks is lazy and stupid.
It would indeed. Is this what you think I'm doing?
Well, it really doesn't matter, because I'm shortly going to take a break from ET, you'll probably be glad to hear.
Anyone interested in contacting me has my e-mail.
We all care a lot for our opinions, otherwise we wouldn't be blogging. But I have still found ET far more civil than any other blog. And while I must admit that I don't always understand your posts (I guess some require more knowledge than I have), I would be missing them if they weren't around. "The womb that spawned that thing is fertile yet"
i don't pretend to fully understand chris' solution, ('bout half way there, i'm guessing!), but if i'm grokking it right, it portends as big a revolution in how we assign economic responsibility and risk as anything karl marx came up with, so it's not surprising that it's talking into a cultural headwind, considering we have all had our brains bernaised around this issue since birth.
many people feel pretty pissed off at banks right now, as they have broken trust with their customers, and now it's bit them in the ass and they don't trust each other...no honour among these thieves. chris' frustration, after patiently and carefully explaining over and over, in diaries and comments for two years+, to an above average intelligence group, can only mean three things, a. chris is not cutting it as explainer, b. the idea itself is deluded or needlessly arcane, and chris has drunk some kind of koolaide, having succeeded in having better luck explaining it to iranian diplomats than to this motley crew at ET, or, c. the idea is above anyone's paygrade other than chris, and the idea will revolutionise capitalism as we knew it, and we'll all be slapping our foreheads 20 years from now, going 'why couldn't we get it, it was staring us in the face all along?'
i vote for c...
it's not stupid on any level that i can ascertain, and chris' dedication to explaining it has shown a tenacity at ET matched only by jerome's shredding of the Serious Journalists' illogic, as they continue to try and throw the public off the scent of what's really going down, and how mesmerisingly stewpydde our present course in europe is as regards energy policy.
that for me is why i came here from dkos, because jerome has an inside view on the back room shit between governments, banks and gas companies, he's a lefty, (as rare as albinos in banking, i imagine), and he's found one of those golden gigs where his work has relatively great effect on how more and people think about the economy as social function (blogging), and about climate change (empowering concrete changes in ways to mitigate global warming).
it's obvious some of chris' comments about banking, while surely not designed to provoke defensiveness from jerome personally, (if he's been that kind of troll it would have showed in other situations by now) have touched a nerve in jerome, who understandably doesn't appreciate the edge in some of chris' comments, since no-one would, in that situation, even if the kind of banking he does is as beneficial as it freakin' gets!
the funny thing is, i think you're both much more in agreement than not, but you haven't met in the middle yet, or the two lines of thinking haven't yet converged, or not enough reality has happened to reveal how the two lines of thought could become one without any sacrifice of either's belief.
maybe i'm naive, but i sense neither of you to be polemic about anything else here in the hallowed halls of ET... chris is picking up on the zeitgeist of dumping on banks and the debit system in a wider sense, and he's welcome to his edge, imo. jerome is not henry paulson though, he myself this time! 's proof that banking has a good and (until we move to chris' system, force majeure!) necessary function in order to make really big things happen. he extols 'boring' banking not 'buccaneer' banking, lol!
chris speaks for most i think in our shock doctrine phase of being disconcerted by the alarmingly parlous state of world banking, and our friends and relatives losing pensions, savings around us makes us look for whom to blame, it's human, just as it is to want retribution and acknowledgment of responsibility from these asswipes... instead they're golden parachuting into beauty spas with bonus billions!
anyone who is not just a leetle beet pissed off by that is either braindead or a masochist. it's indefensible, unspinnable even. the public knows it, and you don't need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows... the time could be right for something as radical as marxism to be tried, tho' i don't know enough to endorse it....still data-collecting...
chris' ideas about revolutionising capitalism deserve his own blog, and yet ET is such a good forum for this kind of idea. i suspect it's a tad too avant-guarde for the average ET reader, and i think we would appreciate seeing more examples in the real world, so it's not so conceptual.
i can't see anything illogical about it, in fact it grows on me the more i think about it, but if i get it, it's going to turn the whole financial services industry on its collective head, and while being forced willy nilly into a yoga headstand might have salutary effects on those who survive the repositioning, it's understandable that a considerable amount of resistance emerges to the idea...
there's also a twinge of doubt as in: if it's as good as it sounds, why is it taking so long to catch on?
i would like to see chris inviting someone else to come and do a diary on his system, preferably someone with a history of how it transformed his/her understanding and practice vis a vis economics, and the history of their own company, LLP, or whatever.
some interplay between two people of the same economic philosophy would help too, to see how on the same page they were, if there was any debate within the movement, so to speak.
i don't sense any hidden agenda from chris' advocacy, or much gloating as the present system comes unglued, but i think his enunciation of many peoples' rage at what's going on, and the patently untruthful responses fo most of the media (duly noted and ghostbusted by jerome) put you both solidly on the same side, from where i hover!
nuff of my bullshyte, you'd be missed chris, as much for the humour on the open freds as for the unbelievably patient approach to explaining an idea as improbable as it is logical and sustainable-(sounding). godspeed and may the wind be always at your back wherever you sail, come back and shoot the breezes with us again soon.
breaks are good, we're coming up to the solstice period, when i had cyber nervous breakdown last year, i'm really going to try and keep ON A TIGHT REIN.
starting tomorrow, promise... The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it. Chinese Proverb.
I'll miss comments like that.
I'll be looking in of course, but I really do have too much on my plate to spend time banging my head against a pretty solid wall.
I think that through ET I have polished a pretty rough diamond, and for me that's enough.
The bonus has been meeting and interacting with some great people.
There is no need to break what works in the banking system. You don't need to convince me that large parts of the financial system are broke, some beyond hope of salvation. That still does not mean that banking is not a useful or needed function ,whn done properly. That it was abused does not mean that it is dead or needs to be. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
I don't think your proposals are crazy. What I don't get is why you don't believe that they can't be done (or approximated with enough closeness) within the existing system - when I see they already are, to a large extent.
It is possible to create a curve by adding together a huge number of approximations. But there may well be a simple but elegant way of generating that curve based on different axioms.
And it is possible to bring together two magnets North South and North South with enough pressure, but they will always tend to fly apart. Whereas if you turn them around, North South; South North they will tend to stick naturally - but there is no guarantee they will stick, if magnetism is lacking.
I believe that it is necessary to reverse the polarity of the financial system, and to do so with what are - I believe - an extremely simple concept at base. The trouble is that a genuine "paradigm shift" is the most difficult thing of all to explain. It's obvious once the penny drops, but until then....
There is no need to break what works in the banking system. You don't need to convince me that large parts of the financial system are broke, some beyond hope of salvation. That still does not mean that banking is not a useful or needed function ,whn done properly. That it was abused does not mean that it is dead or needs to be.
I am not proposing to break anything. What I am proposing is complementary to the existing system, and if it works, then people will use it in preference to the existing system.
I think I have explained many times that I think that banking is indeed a very useful, and indeed necessary discipline. But my critique is not of banking as a discipline, but rather of the structure of banking.
Before I understood the structure of the system in depth I tended to sympathise with those who criticise banking on moral and ethical grounds.
Now I do understand it, I criticise it only in terms of the fact that I believe it is sub-optimal in structure. ie in a post Internet world, credit intermediaries are simply unnecessary, and bankers should look to a future as service providers - like you - adding value without risking your capital creating credit based upon it.
cheers to ya chris, you definitely have bigger fish to fry. thanks for using us to polish up your points.
btw i watched your slide presentation and found it excellent, best of luck. a prophet is never honoured in his own land, one of the most puzzling quirks in human nature.
jerome gets to keep his golden gig....aaaah
i was a bit worried i might have to teach him massage for a while there... The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it. Chinese Proverb.
To make the numbers, simple, lets imagine some country is offering a feed in tariff of €120 /mwh. We expect the mill to be on stream in 2 years. Suppose we offer investors (us) the option of buying the right to one mwh of electricity in two years time for €100 up front now.
Investors will get €120 Euro back for it in two years time when the Mwh is actually produced and sold - and will have made almost 10% p.a. return in return for taking on the risks associated with the project - e.g. project delayed in which case I might have to wait 3 years for my money.
The partnership uses the €100 investors have paid up front for their rights to future electricity production to part fund the purchase and installation of the turbine - getting the rest of the money from other investors and banks.
When my investment matures (my mwh is produced) I have the option of taking my €120 at that point or reinvesting it in more future production, the price of future production being determined by an auction of future production bonds. At that point I may have to pay €105 for a Mwh of electricity (projected to be produced in a further 2 years time) because the project risk will have reduced at that stage and everybody wants part of the action - thus bidding up the price of a bond entitling you to 1 mwh to be produced in two years time.
The partnership uses that money to reduce its bank borrowings or to fund operating costs. At some point in the life cycle of the project, perhaps when the bank borrowings have been paid off, the turbine will be producing more money than is required to fund its ongoing operation. At that point the partnership will be able to pay its members a dividend arising out of the surplus - or use that money to fund a second turbine.
What I am not clear on is who that dividend or additional future production accrues to - is it the people who have bought the original bonds, or everyone who has bought bonds over the lifecycle of the project, and if so, in what proportions. I know this is an odd capitalist question, but who actually owns the mill - especially when the time comes for it to be decommissioned or radically overhauled? Who makes those management decisions? notes from no w here
But there are more questions. If there banks and major investors involved, wouldn't they want a preferential pay-off for their investment? Effectively they'd get their energy units first.
Secondly, accounting for the ownership of the energy units is going to get interesting, especially if production is queued so some owners get their units before others.
This isn't a minor wrinkle because if the windmill stops working, the true status of energy units becomes - what? If all units are equal and can be bought and sold ad lib, what happens if the units don't exist?
Finally wouldn't it be more sensible to build the windmill somewhere where there's already a guaranteed customer base? Relying on feed-ins is risky because they can be changed without notice - unless you can persuade a major government or utility to agree to a contractual price for an extended term. Which might be negotiable - or might not.
There are business and science parks in the UK which already have one-off windmill power. I'm thinking the scheme becomes much less risky if it's pitched as offering a combination of stable pricing and reliability of supply to a captive customer base which is likely to want to invest in those features for itself.
