Hazel Henderson

Geoengineering, Emissions Curbs and the Ongoing Energy Debate

Very sensible advice ! The only " geo-engineering "that makes sense, are agreements to better manage the Earth's forests, rangelands,and agriculature according to best , holistic management practices such as those of Allan Savory in his path-breaking wotk, see Holistic Land Management ,Island Press 1985 , and the successes of his methods in Australia .Savory says that these changes, if agreed on in Copenhagen at the Climate Summit could sequester all current carbon emissions and even some legacy carbon ( EthicalMarkets.com click on Climate Prosperity Funds ). And a carbon tax , revenue neutral ,with cuts in income and payroll taxes is the way to go. Senator Corker of Tennesseesee this as a win-win that Republicans would support.( see my article in the Chirstian Science Monitor in 1990 !! )

Cap-and-Trade Is Not Like the Space Race

Good analysis ! Much better than all the wrangling over caps, targets for emissions , trading carbon derivatives which INTERPOL says will be the next global white collar crimewave,. There is evidence for agreement in Copenhagen on a minimum world price for carbon , even if as low as 10 euros a ton !
Likely that China,India and Brazil would agree and collect a domustic carbon tax ( see Dr. Paul Werbos analysis at pwerbos.com ). Then the mounting support worldwide for the Climate Prosperity Alliance and Climate Bonds ( see globalurban.org and EthicalMarkets.com , click on Climate Prosperity ) can address re-industrialization toward the low-carbon economies we all seek and can be ramped up , with laddered bonds held by the world's pension funds. The global green market has been estimated at $45 trillion . Climate Prosperity investments are already exploding .
Copenhagen can turn into a global agreement to ramp up solar, wind , energy efficient infrastructure in developing countries . They can never afford nuclear, oil or coal ( even without including theri huge external costs ). This aligns with 21 UN agencies now promoting the Global Green New Deal and the goal of $1 trillion per year for the next 10 years , i.e. $10 trillion is less that what's been spent on the bailouts and only 10% of the world's pension fund assets of $120 trillion.

Regulatory Reform: The New Geithner Plan

I agree with most of the reforms but they don't go far enough. I agree with Britain's head of their Financial Services authority,: we need to downsize all the overblown financial sectors which metastasized and became cancers on the real productive sectors. An efficient financial sector which serves the real economy should be way less than 10% of a country's GDP. In Britain and the USA they got to over 20% of their GDPs. Financial players do not produce wealth , they are intermediaries.
So , as this British regulator advocates , we must re-instate and enact by G-20 agreement a financial transactions tax . This would begin to curb speculation and HF trading and can be used for reducing deficits,or other public pursposes. Credit default swaps can be re-classified as gamblng and turned over to Gaming Commissions or else banned entirely.
We also need financial risk insurance pools, so that financial players pay into a pool , like the FDIC , to mitigate their risks they create for the real economy . Premiums can rise as their leverage and bonuses increase. And yes, bring back and update Glass Steagal , repeal Gramm-Leach-Bliley and deal with " too big to fail" by forcing higher and higher capital reserve ratios , by a new, more sensible Basel III global agreement.
Lastly , Obama needs to fire Larry Summers and send him and Geithner back to Wall Street. Even Larry Summers wrote a paper in 1989 advocating a financial transactions tax
( see my Building A Win Win World 1996 and HazelHenderson.com click on FXTRS ) ! If Obama had begun his administration by agressive reform of Wall Street and the financial sectors including insurance , he would have had an across the board coalition of all those who were shocked and angry at Bush and Paulson and Geithner's bailouts . The healthcare debate is not really about healthcare , but about the shocking unfairness of the bailouts.

Natural Gas: America's Energy Salvation

I have written for years that natural gas is the best transition fuel for both economic, energyu and environmental reasons. How soon can coal fired planet already using nat ,gas for peaking convert to using it for baseload too ? And does this mean that coal is now too expensive ( even without all the subsidies and the "externalities : mountantop removal, mercury emissions , soot ,CO2 and other harmful effects ). ? We can post answers to these questoins at EthicalMarkets.com

Balance Sheet Wars: U.S. Solar Companies vs. Chinese Government

Add that China's stimulus package was more accurately trageted than was possible in the USA .China's rapid shift toward the green economy and raising domestic consumption is possible because their approach is not limited to hyping private consumption ( e.g. cash for clunkers ) but toward targeting both the green economy and group domestic consumption : e.g. putting a national healthcare system in place , along with beefing up social security ..
And naive financial " pundits" in the USA who keep warning about the solvency of China's banks don't seem to grasp that their percentage of government ownership and China's huge reserves mean that China will never allow its banks to be in financial jeopardy.

So US -based solar companies do face an uphill climb . However, the global green economy market is so huge ( tens of trillions over the next five years ) that there will be enough for everybody ( see Climate Prosperity Funds at EthicalMarkets.com ) . Meanwhile collapsing gas prices due to new ways of accessing shale deposits means that coal is now too expensive , even for old coal utilities , who will begin substituting gas not only for peak loads , but for baseload as well. So if I owned any coal stocks which I don't I'd be shorting them . As for nukes, they are still the most expensive way humans have ever devised to boil water..

Dosclosure : holding Stirling Energy Systems, Solaria, Envision Solar,as well as Suntech

Distinction Between Positive and Normative Economics Misses the Point

If only economists would admit that economics is a profession , not a science , we would all be better off. Even the Bank of Sweden's prize in economics which they foisted onto the Nobel Committee to dress up economics as " science" is now coming unglued. I and many others, mathematicians who point out economists' misuse of mathematics to hide their normative assumptions , including Nassim Taleb, Paolo Triani, Ralph Abraham , as well as historian of science Robert Nadeau , physicist Fritjof Capra have joined with Peter Nobel, Alfred Nobel's descendent , in calling for this Bank of Sweden Prize to be de-linked from the real Nobels. For my articles on this see HazelHenderson.com click on Editorials

Letter to Her Majesty: Suggestion for Low-Tech Apparatus for Economic Horizon-Scanning

As a fellow Brit who enjoyed David Warsh's Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations , I appreciate this article and agree with most of it. However, we must still go further outside the " Economics " box and take a systems and compexity view . For example, economists have still not corrected most of their textbooks to embrace the new "triple bottom line " accounting models , which internalize " externalities" . The new ESG ( environment , social and governance ) performance audits of companies has been shown to be material to asset value .
Similarly, these new accounting methods at the level of the firm , need also to be applied to national accounts ( UNSNAs) i.e. to correct GDP/GNP accordingly , by subtracting the costs still
" externaized" to taxpayers and society , as well as the
" defensive " expenditures ( e.g. to clean up pollution) ---all still counted in national accounts as additional " production".
I co-organized the debate in the European Parliament on
BEYOND GDP in 2007 beyond-gdp.eu
When economists and financial "engineers" blind us to externalities , they set us up for continual crises . These " Black Swans " are of our own making.
My forthcoming monograph with physicist Fritjof Capra ,
" Qualitiative Growth" will be published by the Society of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and Tomorrow's Company and launched in the House of Lords in November.. I commend this and my own multi-disciplinary ,systems approach to measuring national trends with the Calvert Group of socially responsible mutual funds, the Calver-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators( updated at Calvert-Henderson.com ) to David Warsh's attention, as well as the faculty of LSE and Her Majesty.

Finding the Real Economy

For much more on what's wrong with GDP and GNP and NIPA, go to beyond-gdp.eu which has the TV and print Proceedings in six languages of the BEYOND GDP debate in the European Parliament , Nov, 19-20 , 2007 , of which I was a co-organizer .
My company, Ethical Markets( USA and Brazil ) and GlobeScan , the London-based survey firm conducted a survey on Beyond GDP for the EP in ten countries, Results also at this site , and at EthicalMarkets.com and GlobeScan.com

Taking an Honest Look at GDP Calculation

Good article and good comments so far. Looking deeper , GDP is a cash flow statement , but doesn't count the almost 50% of additional goods and vital services unpaid and exchanged freely and therfore not included in GDP e.g. community volunteering, electronic barter ( exploding , e.g Craiglist,Freecycle all covered in Barter News barternews.com) , home care for the elderly and sick, etc) . Nor does GDP account for ecological services and assets provided by nature , e.g. forests ,watersheds and recycling of human wastes ). Nor does GDP have an asset account to balance public debt with the assets such investments create: e.g schools, roads , etc. More at beyond-GDP.eu Calvert-Henderson.com and EthicalMarkets.tv click on "Redefining Success and The Unpaid,"Love" Economy"

Desertec Solar Project: Investors Can't Afford to Be Too Green if They Want to Make Money

DESERTEC is one example of the growing Climate Prosperity movement ( more at wwwEthicalMarkets.com and globalurban.org cliuck on Climate Prosperity )

Understanding Cap and Trade: Why It Has Been the Option of Choice

Let's keep the cap and ditch the "trade", which is an open invitation to Wall Street to game the system. Banks are now savoring the some $2 trillion of carbon derivatives as a new profit center from this new "asset class". So far , where cap and trading of carbon is in effect in Europe , lobbyists for the electric utilities got so many free " allowances" that they crashed the carbon market. They made windfall profits by adding to consumers bills. Bottom line : no reduction of carbon emissions !
Better to go with GREEN TAX SHIFTING, where income and payroll taxes are reduced and shifted in a revenue neutral way to waste,and all forms of pollition, not just carbon. Meanwhile, the Climate Prosperity Alliance offers the best path to a low-carbon world economy ( see EthicalMarkets.com click on Climate Prosperity Funds and globalurban.org click on Climate Prosperity.)Let's change the debate from costs to incumbent fossil fuel sectors to the benefits, savings and revenues from investing over the next 10 years to ramp up energy efficiency and the renewable sectors of the emerging Solar Age.

JP Morgan: High Frequency Trading a Form of Parasitic Market Making

Thanks for this article, helping explain another bunch of reasons not to trust Wall St.

Renewable Energy Finance Forum: Looking to Washington for Guidance on New Financing

Watch for the release of the report soon in Beijing on Climate Solutions : Low Carbon Re-Industrialization on Climate Prosperity Bonds ( see EthicalMarkets.com click on Climate Prosperity Funds.)

Cap-and-Trade and the Cheap Energy Illusion

Thank you,Jeff Siegel ! I take your Newsletter and I personally invested in many of your stock picks, including Nevada Geothermal, Western Wind, World Water and Solar ,Comverge ,Itron, Eneroc and others. I have written about Green Tax shifting for decades : reduce taxes on incomes and payrolls and shift them to virgin resource exploitation m energy waste and all forms of pollution, not just carbon. Then get the world's pension funds ( $120 trillion in assets) to invest in Climate Prosperity Bonds ( see EthicalMarkets.com)

The Bubble Blowers: Goldman Sachs and Cap and Trade

Thanks for the truth telling , on cap and trade ( forced into the climate debate by US market fundamentalists) , as well as on Goldman !
I have advocated the " green tax shift " used in Europe : reduce taxes on incomes and payrolls and raise the same amount on all forms of pollution ( not just carbon), and on energy waste and unneccesary exreaction of virgin resources when recycled materials are available. this would be revenue neutral and get the price signals going right.( more at EthicalMarkets.com )