Source: investors.com
The Crash Of The Climate Exchange
Climate Fraud: As the case for global warming and cap-and-trade has collapsed, so too has the market that was to exploit this manufactured crisis for fun and profit. The climate-change bubble has burst.
Lost in the hubbub leading up to the Republican and Tea Party tsunami on Nov. 2 was the collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). But its implications for the future of the American economy and the business climate are staggering: It is an acknowledgment that both the case for climate trade and cap-and-tax legislation has also collapsed.
On Oct. 21 the exchange announced it was ending carbon trading, which, as Pajamas Media's Steve Milloy points out, was "the only purpose for which it was founded." Launched as a "voluntary" method of trading "carbon credits," CCX rested on the hope that cap-and-tax legislation would make such trading mandatory — and profitable.
CCX billed itself as "North America's only cap-and-trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide." Barack Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002, when it issued CCX start-up grants. Presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett also once sat on the Joyce board. As president, cap-and-trade is one of Obama's highest priorities.
The exchange's founder, Richard Sandor, says he knew Obama as far back as when the Joyce Foundation awarded money to the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, where Sandor was research professor. He estimated that climate trading could be "a $10 trillion market," which it very well might have been if cap-and-trade legislation like Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer made into law. But now, in the wake of Climate-gate and other scandals, as well as recent election results, that's an unlikely event.
For his efforts, Sandor was named as one of Time magazine's "Heroes of the Planet" in 2002 and one of its "Heroes of the Environment" in 2007. Sanders eventually sold his 16.5% stake in CCX for $98.5 million, making him a hero of take-the-money-and-run.
The biggest losers are CCX's two biggest investors, Al Gore's Generation Investment Management and Goldman Sachs, that champion of sound money management that serves as the farm team for administration staffing.
Other CCX founders include former Goldman Sachs partner David Blood, as well as Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris, also of Goldman Sachs. In 2006, CCX received a big boost when another investor purchased a 10% stake on the prospect of making a great deal of money for itself. That investor was Goldman Sachs, accused of selling financial instruments it knew were doomed to fail."
Abel Danger celebrates with a little video imagery!
What to do with the Campbell legacy here in B.C. I want my money back.
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