DDP Newsletter March 2009, Vol. XXVI, No. 2
A “hard cap on all carbon emissions.” A “25% federal renewable portfolio standard (RPS) to require that 25% of electricity consumed in the U.S. is derived from clean, sustainable energy sources, like solar, wind, and geothermal by 2025.” A goal of “making all new buildings carbon neutral (that is, producing zero emissions) by 2030.” Within six years, “one million 150 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrid cars on our roads.” These are promises from the I-can-and-I-will President.
Other proposed hope-and-change caps and quotas include a global budget (hard cap) on medical expenditures. Zero uninsured, and 100% covered. Reduction in “health care disparities” (increasing cardiac interventions for one ethnic group, decreasing them for another, or both?). Caps on executive pay, quotas for “green” or possibly “diverse” workers.
The authority sets the cap, and the private sector gets to “trade” in order to meet it.
One way of staying under the cap, and increasing one’s own share is to decrease the number of humans. More money for contraception and abortion is explicitly seen by some as a part of “economic recovery.” Jonathan Porritt, chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, believes that money should be diverted even from curing illnesses into increasing abortions. “I think we will work our way toward a position that says having more than two children is irresponsible” (Catholic Herald 2/6/09).
One rationale for draconian measures is to “wag the ‘fat tail’ of climate catastrophe.” The UN IPCC may give a range of temperature increases over the next 100 years of 1.1 C to 6.5 C. If that’s not scary enough, it could be even worse. The probability distribution never completely rules out the chance of the equivalent of a 12-foot-tall man (Ronald Baily, Reason Online 2/10/09). Then there’s the dreaded hypothetical “tipping point”: once we hit some level, positive feedback will send temperatures spiraling uncontrollably upward in an irreversible doomsday process. (The climate models have positive feedback built in.)
Bailey writes that someone should do “an analysis of the fat tailed probability that bad government policy will create a civilization wrecking catastrophe.”
In the Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn gave an example of what some did when faced with an impossible quota of the number of logs to be loaded onto a railroad car. To live, one had to cheat, and not get caught. Game the system–or die.
Setting a cap assumes, of course, that somebody knows what it should be. How much should be spent on medical care? How much CO2 should humans emit? How many humans should there be? The central planner supposedly knows.
Is it “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”? Vladimir Putin warned of these at the Davos conference (Raimondo, Antiwar.com 2/2/09). In an astonishing example of an American President “red-baited by the Kremlin,” Putin said: “In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.”
PREPARING FOR DISASTER
Various government agencies, so say some internet sources, are querying cemeteries about their capacity to handle mass casualties–as from pandemic influenza. But social unrest in an uncontained economic meltdown is another possibility. “Prepare for the coming riots,” writes Richard Maybury in an emergency subscriber bulletin on Apr 1.
The value of global financial assets fell by more than $50 trillion in 2008, the equivalent to a whole year’s global GDP. “This crisis is the first truly universal one in the history of humanity,” said former International Monetary Fund managing director Michel Camdessus at an Asian Development Bank forum (Bloomberg News 3/9/09). What to do?
“Stimulus” packages always fail. A 2004 UCLA economic study revealed that FDR’s New Deal prolonged the depression by 7 years. Ten Japanese stimulus bills between the 1992 real estate crash and 2000 poured billions into infrastructure; unemployment is still twice that in 1992 (Bamford, TWTW 2/14/09). Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world, totaling 180% of its $5.5 trillion economy. Its future generations will have paved-over rural areas, and an enormous tax burden (Downsizer Dispatch 2/10/09).
Infrastructure does not generate goods to sell abroad. And when the project is done, so are the jobs, writes Paul Craig Roberts (Rense.com 2/9/09).
If $20 trillion in private capital cannot be enticed to enter the market, and the government tries to “replace” it, Karl Denninger predicts a bond market collapse. Unable to sell U.S. Treasury debt, the federal government would have to contract to one-third its current size overnight. This would mean cutting all Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending, reducing military spending by 75% and all other discretionary spending by 50%–with a very high probability of complete destabilization of our political system.
Private capital is withdrawn because the market sees government “rescues” as a coverup for raw fraud and abuse. Denninger lists many examples of “The Bezzle”– malfeasance and misfeasance in government agencies (Market Ticker 3/2/09).
The housing bubble collapsed, then the commodities bubble (especially oil). Is there now a Treasury bubble (Market Ticker 12/8/08), and an energy (cap-and-trade) bubble (National Center for Public Policy Research 1/15/09)?
Maybury is 95% sure that the Great Crisis is here, and predicts 3 to 5 years of chaos (EWR, April 2009). He advises a 3-month stockpile of all life’s necessities: food, prescription drugs, matches, fresh water, toilet paper, soap, cash, an emergency radio–and a Remington Model 870 12-gauge pump “equalizer.” Ultimately, he is optimistic that we will see a new golden age, with a return to the gold standard and the Constitution–if we survive.
The Bezzle must be stopped–including the CO2/global climate change fraud. Practical, affordable energy sources must be rapidly developed. Respect for truth, and for human life and liberty must be restored. In the meantime, to borrow an expression from the warmers, we are “committed” to the chaos and hardship in the “pipeline.”
FAITH IN MODELS
Before the economic meltdown occurred, banks and financial institutions employed legions of mathematicians and statisticians with Ph.D.s to model the risks the firms were assuming under a variety of scenarios, writes Leland Teschler (Machine Design 2/17/09).
Judging by the current calamity, the models failed miserably. The problem: too much faith in the assumptions, including that past trends would hold. Risk analyst Huybert Groenendaal, whose background is in modeling disease transmission, warns that climate change is similar to financial markets: skepticism is essential.
REGISTER NOW!
Once again we have an internationally known roster of outstanding scientists scheduled to speak at our 27th annual meeting, Jul 31-Aug 2, 2009, at the Doubletree Hotel Denver. A draft program is enclosed. Note the hotel reservation deadline, June 15. The DDP conference rate is $94 for up to four guests.
The Heartland Institute’s March conference in New York City was outstanding. If you couldn’t be there, you can still hear most of the talks online, www.heartland.org.