European Tribune - Comments - The Economist is against a "Green New Deal"
Subsidising clean energy requires politicians to decide on the best way of delivering it, and their judgment is likely to be worse than the market's.
Here the precise topic is green investment, elsewhere it is transport or other infrastructure investments mooted as a fiscal response to the large recession that is incoming.
Everywhere, the chant is the same "politicians make bad choices, leave it to the market," "public investment crowds private enterprise out of the economy" and various other similar tropes.
This is their spin, this is the new party line on keeping their economic mythology alive. It's not primarily about rejecting green investment, it's all about rejecting any kind of "New Deal."
The greatest sadness for our political society is that barriers to entry and incumbent advantage in the media markets are so powerful. Hence, despite eagerly pushing the policies that have created the crash that surrounds us, Cowen, Phelps, the FT, The Economist and all the rest get a big platform to tell us that there is no solution, that the economy is like the weather and we should not try to save ourselves, but kneel and pray, perhaps before a frieze of Friedman and Hayek, pray for tax cuts and deliverance.
This presentation
Introducing the PetroTrust
went down really well in Teheran and of course envisages the use of legal frameworks other than "the Corporation" which is in fact what makes the Private sector "Private".
I got to see all sorts of interesting people, including ministers, two heads of national corporations and the Chairman of the Majlis Energy Commission, and was asked to do an outline proposal for a how a global market in gas (an Iran, Qatar, Russia "Gas OPEC" meeting took place the day after I left) could look - which I have done, but it's on hold 'til I sort out a couple of commercial issues with them.
The market I have in mind is a market operating on a "Not for Loss" basis, with producers/consumers primary and traders secondary.
It incorporates a proposal for "unitisation" of gas using Units redeemable in gas. Such unitisation would replace the need for secured debt finance and create an entirely new global market. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Metatone:
seems they don't have such a virulent attitude to nuclear and oil getting a leg-up, or do they?
but kneel and pray, perhaps before a frieze of Friedman and Hayek, pray for tax cuts and deliverance.
LOL! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
They're not likely to be happy about this.
this is their nightmare, having to watch people smash the manacles that kept them enslaved to the 'big boys', keeping them fat, while little people suffer. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
That's fine. The farther back they have to wind up moving the goalposts, the better off we'll find ourselves. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
