By Institute for Energy Research ——Bio and Archives--July 7, 2014
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THERE is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if there's one thing I've learned throughout my work in finance, government and conservation, it is to act before problems become too big to manage. For too many years, we failed to rein in the excesses building up in the nation's financial markets. When the credit bubble burst in 2008, the damage was devastating. Millions suffered. Many still do. We're making the same mistake today with climate change. We're staring down a climate bubble that poses enormous risks to both our environment and economy. The warning signs are clear and growing more urgent as the risks go unchecked.This is simply jaw-dropping chutzpah from Paulson. From reading the above, one would think the poor Treasury Secretary was a Cassandra when in office, doing his darndest to warn the public and regulators about the crisis building in the financial sector. In reality, of course, Paulson did his best to reassure the public that everything was fine with the American economy. We've compiled a short clip of Paulson's appearance on "Face the Nation," taken from July 2008, fully eights months after the recession officially began and a mere two months before the worldwide panic. Yet look how Paulson does everything in his power to bamboozle Americans: But wait, it gets worse. Not only was Paulson totally incompetent and/or dishonest before the financial crash, but in the immediate aftermath he was instrumental in one of the greatest bait-and-switch moves in world history. Recall that the infamous "TARP" stood for "Troubled Asset Relief Program." The original proposal was that the federal government would spend many hundreds of billions of dollars buying up so-called "toxic" assets (tied to the collapsing real estate market) from financial institutions, so that they could shore up their balance sheets and prevent world credit markets from freezing up. Yet in practice, the government didn't buy assets, but instead acquired equity positions in major investment banks. Furthermore, this wasn't a voluntary transaction: Paulson made them an offer they couldn't refuse. He told the bank CEOs that if they didn't accept the Treasury's generous infusion of capital (in exchange for preferred stock), then their chief regulator--Ben Bernanke--would suddenly discover problems with their firms. In case the reader thinks I'm exaggerating, here's how Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal put it after FOIA requests showed just how that meeting went down:
Remember the infamous meeting when then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had the heads of 9 major banks come down to Washington? It was then that he made them the offer they couldn't refuse. Take TARP cash, or else! Now Judicial Watch...has uncovered secret documents from that meeting via the Freedom of Information Act. A few of them are really quite stunning. The first 1-pager is Paulson's talking points for the bank. It basically confirms that he put a gun to all their heads. It says they must agree to take their cash, and that if they protested, then each bank's regulator would force them to take it anyway.In a sense, Henry Paulson actually is a great guy to be spearheading the movement to get the federal government heavily involved in the energy sector. He has a history of obfuscation and mafia tactics with which he showers his cronies with government-backed privileges. In any event, it's worth pointing out that the actual insurance sector--let alone the broader business community--is not embracing climate alarmism the way Paulson, Bloomberg, and Steyer are. A recent E&E article reported: "Zurich Insurance Group is closing its U.S. climate change office six years after opening it to help persuade companies to press public officials for solutions to climbing disaster losses, according to several sources."
As extreme heat spreads across the middle of the country by the end of the century, some states in the Southeast, lower Great Plains, and Midwest risk up to a 50% to 70% loss in average annual crop yields (corn, soy, cotton, and wheat), absent agricultural adaptation. [Bold added.]Those last three words are fairly crucial, no? In order to generate such enormous losses (of 50% to 70% of crop yields), the study not only has to focus on a very unlikely climate outcome, but also has to assume that farmers stupidly ignore the changing conditions for the next 85 years. With that benchmark, you could generate all sorts of catastrophic predictions. For example, if we assume motorists don't apply the brakes when they see an accident in front of them, then by the end of next week we can expect 50% of Americans to be involved in a huge pileup on the highway.
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The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. IER maintains that freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and effective solutions to today’s global energy and environmental challenges and, as such, are critical to the well-being of individuals and society.