Sun 2010-07-25 16:55 EDT

Carbon trading a front for money-laundering: experts - Hindustan Times

Agence France-Presse

Organised crime gangs are using carbon emissions trading schemes as fronts for money-laundering,experts warned on Friday. The experts who attended a meeting of the Asia Pacific Money Laundering Group (APG) said crime syndicates are resorting to new methods to hide their illegal proceeds. One "issue that we've looked at closely is money laundering associated with carbon emissions trading schemes", APG executive secretary Gordon Hook told a news conference after the five-day meeting. Hook did not elaborate on how crime syndicates were using carbon emissions trading schemes to launder money...

Carbon Trading; experts; front; Hindustan Times; money laundering.

New Deal 2.0 Sun 2010-07-25 16:08 EDT

Marriner S. Eccles: Keynesian Evangelist Before Keynes

Henry C. K. Liu

...From direct experience, [1930s Federal Reserve chairman Marriner S. Eccles] realized that bankers like himself, by doing what seemed sound on an individual basis, by calling in loans and refusing new lending in hard times, only contributed to the financial crisis. He saw from direct experience the evidence of market failure. He concluded that to get out of the depression, government intervention, something he had been taught was evil, was necessary to place purchasing power in the hands of the public. In the industrial age, the mal-distribution of income (which was hugely unequal) and the excessive savings for capital investment always lead to the masses exhausting their purchasing power, unable to sustain the benefits of mass production that such savings brought...By denying the masses necessary purchasing power, capital denies itself of the very demand that would justify its investment in new production. Credit can extend purchasing power but only until the credit runs out, which would soon occur without the support of adequate income...Eccles, who never attended university or studied economics formally, articulated his pragmatic conclusions in speeches a good three years before Keynes wrote his epoch-making The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936)....Eccles' transformation from a businessman, brought up to believe in survival of the fittest, to his belief in government spending on the neediest can teach us many lessons today...The solution is to start the money flowing again by directing it not toward those who already have a surplus, but to those who have not enough. Giving more money to those who already have too much would take more money out of circulation into idle savings and prolong the depression...Eccles promoted a limited war on poverty and unemployment, not on moral but on utilitarian grounds.

0; Keynes; Keynesian Evangelist; Marriner S. Eccles; new dealing 2.

The Money Game Fri 2010-07-16 18:52 EDT

Here's The Real Reason Cities And States Would Never Be Allowed To Default

David Goldman at Asia Times nails it: It's not about the impact on the real economy (the attendant cut in public services and public employment), it's about the effect that such defaults would have on the banks...that's a good rule of thumb. If it's going to hurt the banks, it's probably not going to be allowed to happen...The $800 billion bailout package for Europe's PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) in May was in fact a bailout for the banking system...

allowed; default; Money game; Real Reason Cities; s; state.

Fri 2009-11-20 09:59 EST

Interfluidity :: Sympathy for the Treasury

On Monday, I was among a group of eight bloggers who attended a discussion with "senior Treasury officials" in Washington...Although the format of our meeting did not lend itself to forging deep relationships, I was flattered and grateful for the meeting and left with more sympathy for the people I spoke to than I came in with. In other words, I have been corrupted, a little...The most interesting aspect of the meeting was anthropological, getting a look at how senior Treasury officials behaved, how they interacted with us and what kind of a thing this was to them. It was a two hour meeting, but different groups of officials came at us in shifts, and stayed with us for 20 to 40 minutes. The tone of the meeting was open, earnest, and informal. But somehow, it never felt like we connected, like there was a lot of actual communication occurring.

Interfluidity; sympathy; Treasury.