Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
A tale of how it turned out right
Andrew Simms, bbcnews
Western governments, including the UK’s, are desperate to restore the global economy along “business as usual” lines. But, argues Andrew Simms, that is a short-sighted approach; a radical, green-tinged redevelopment would bring much bigger environmental, social and economic benefits.
If the only navigation system you have keeps directing you over a cliff, it’s time to reprogram it
If someone offered you a plan that would get rich countries on to a radical path of deep, immediate carbon cuts to tackle climate change and also solved a great swathe of social problems, would you take it?
A team of scientists and economists at the New Economics Foundation (nef) has come up with one.
It’s called The Great Transition.
It provides a blueprint – or rather, a greenprint – for how the UK can make a step-change in delivering quality of life for all, whilst living within our collective environmental means…
(19 Oct 2009)
This article links up with the launch of the report on nef’s website. You need to create an account on the site to download the report.
Investor alarm as Finance Minister blasts corporate Japan’s ethics
Leo Lewis, The Times
In a declaration of policy that will dismay both domestic and foreign investors, Japan’s new Financial Services Minister yesterday reiterated his demand for a return to traditional business practices and insisted that “there will be no apeing of America” on his watch.
Companies are not “money-making tools” for enriching shareholders and managements should embrace the “social meaning” of being corporations, Shizuka Kamei told The Times.
In his first interview with the foreign press since being appointed last month — and in his clearest statement yet of economic ideology — Mr Kamei condemned corporate Japan for dismantling the qualities that once made the country great.
“Japan became No 1 in the world and it is an objective and historical fact that Japan achieved that because of a typically Japanese style of corporate management,” he said…
(15 Oct 2009)
Memo to Investigators: Dig Deep
William Greider, The Nation
When the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission opened for business on September 17, it was a nonevent for the media. Leading newspapers brushed aside chairman Phil Angelides, the former California state treasurer, and his declaration of purpose–“uncovering the facts and providing an unbiased historical accounting of what brought our financial system and our economy to its knees.” As Angelides put it, “The fuses for that cataclysm were undoubtedly lit years before. It is our job to diligently and doggedly follow those fuses to their origins.”
The press has moved on. Financial crisis was last year’s story. Didn’t the Treasury and Federal Reserve announce they have already turned things around? Hasn’t the president proposed a bunch of complicated reforms (boring!) for Congress to enact? Yes, but that is the problem. How can Washington reform the financial system when we still don’t know what happened?
We may know the broad outlines, but the landscape remains littered with unanswered questions and informed suspicions about who did what to produce the breakdown. The relevant facts are still buried in the files of Wall Street firms and the regulatory agencies that utterly failed as watchdogs. The Angelides commission has the subpoena power to dig out secrets–from e-mails and private memos, and through testimony under oath–that can disclose political deal-making and ruinous financial strategies. Given the rush of events, the commission may be the public’s last, best chance to get at the truth of the matter…
(8 Oct 2009)
A year after the crunch, it’s boom time again for bankers
Patrick Hosking and Christine Seib, Times online
nvestment bankers are about to enjoy a record bonus season as confidence surges in the financial markets.
Just 12 months after the global economy was brought close to collapse by reckless lending — forcing banks to turn to taxpayers for help — stock markets in London and New York are enjoying one of the strongest bull runs in decades and investment banks are preparing to announce huge profits.
In Britain, job losses slowed in the three months to August. Unemployment rose by 88,000 to 2.47 million, the lowest rise since July last year, and youth unemployment fell slightly. China reported strong trade figures and oil hit a high for the year.
Goldman Sachs, which employs 5,500 people in London, is expected to report a sharp rise in third-quarter profits today. Analysts estimate that, barring a major setback, the average London worker at Goldman will receive about $748,000 (£467,000) in salary and bonuses — 13 per cent higher than 2007 and more than double the 2008 average…
(15 Oct 2009)
Public Health Before Wall Street Wealth
Robert Scheer, truthdig
Wonderful. The 13 Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee get one faintly rational Republican to join them in a meaningless stab at health care reform and it throws the media into a titillated frenzy about what it all means. It means very little.
The main thrust of the proposal is to forcibly submit even more customers to the tender mercies of the insurance industry while doing nothing significant to cut costs. Insurers will now pretend that the burdens on them are onerous and will demand concessions to make this an even bigger boondoggle for the medical profiteers than George W. Bush’s prescription drug coverage initiative.
The insurers’ leverage with the few moderate Republicans and with conservative Democrats will prevent the merging of the Baucus bill with the more serious attempts at reform in other Senate and House proposals. While President Barack Obama was celebrating Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, for being “extraordinarily diligent” in working with the Democrats, she was already proclaiming the exit strategy she will use if the bill becomes worthwhile. “My vote today is my vote today,” Snowe said Tuesday. “It doesn’t forecast what my vote will be tomorrow.”
The health care debate has become a convenient distraction, for both political parties, from the far more pressing issues surrounding the banking meltdown. As important as health insurance is as an issue, representing 16 percent of the economy, and with so many uninsured, no sane person can deny that the current system is a sorry mess that needs to be changed. But why now and not after a growth economy has returned?
…There is an odd disconnect between the furious public debate over health care reform, with its emphasis on the cost of an increased government role, and the nonexistent discussion about the far more expensive and largely secretive government program to bail out Wall Street. Why the agitation over the government spending $83 billion a year on health care when at least 20 times that amount has been thrown at the creators of the ongoing financial crisis without any serious public accountability? On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that employees of the financial industry that we taxpayers saved are slated to be paid a record $140 billion this year…
(13 Oct 2009)
Stiglitz and Sen’s Manifesto on Measuring Economic Performance and Social Progress
Hassan Masum, Worldchanging
Key Messages
The seemingly bright growth performance of the world economy between 2004 and 2007 may have been achieved at the expense of future growth. It is also clear that some of the performance was a “mirage”, profits that were based on prices that had been inflated by a bubble.
The whole Commission is convinced that the crisis is teaching us a very important lesson: those attempting to guide the economy and our societies are like pilots trying to steering a course without a reliable compass. The decisions they (and we as individual citizens) make depend on what we measure, how good our measurements are and how well our measures are understood. We are almost blind when the metrics on which action is based are ill-designed or when they are not well understood. For many purposes, we need better metrics. Fortunately, research in recent years has enabled us to improve our metrics, and it is time to incorporate in our measurement systems some of these advances.
The first main message of our report is that the time has come to adapt our system of measurement of economic activity. There are now many products whose quality is complex, multi-dimensional and subject to rapid change. This is obvious for goods, like cars, computers, washing machines and the like, but is even truer for services, such as medical services, educational services, information and communication technologies, research activities and financial services. Capturing quality change is a tremendous challenge, yet this is vital to measuring real income and real consumption, some of the key determinants of people’s material well-being…
(15 Oct 2009)
The report can be accessed here.
The sound of one bank not banking
ilargi, the automatic earth
(18 Oct 2009)
Ilargi: Dylan Ratigan has a few stats that you may find useful:
Goldman Sachs’ Black Magic, Here’s How They Did It
Here is the Goldman, Sachs & Co. revenue break down for the past 3 months:
Financial Advisory-M/A: $325 million.
Equity Underwriting: $363 million.
Debt Underwriting: $211 million.
Trading-Principal Investments: $10 billion.
Notice that 10 billion is much bigger than two or three hundred million made from the traditional Wall Street businesses.
That $10 billion is evidence of their magic trick. For we the taxpayer gave Goldman Sachs the following:
$10 Billion in TARP
$11 Billion from the Fed
$30 Billion from the FDIC
$13 Billion from AIG
For a grand total of almost $70 Billion (Goldman along with every other bank and AIG would have been defunct without this money).
Goldman at the apex of the crisis is delivered this money — which they then use to borrow against at $20 or $30 for every $1. Which at 30x equals $2.1 trillion in available capital. As one of the only banks in the world with money at the time, Goldman Sachs was able to buy billions in distressed assets around the world at record low prices — only to watch $23.7 trillion in US taxpayer money be deployed during the past year to re-inflate the asset’s values that Goldman had purchased with our tax money…
