What is it with all these commodity manipulators always looking to trade something else? When Enron was cooking along and on its way to becoming the largest company on the planet by market cap they were trading everything, anything that moved, didn't move, or thought about moving on its way 'to or from' any market in the Global networked economy.
They wanted it all, and what did all of us get out of it in the end; "Sarbaines-Oxley!" That's right more regulation after their house of cards collapsed.
And yet, those commodity trading innovations, if you can call them that, and schemes never seem to amaze me.
No Sir, and what have we been recently hearing - it's all about "carbon-trading" and carbon credits - and oh yes, we must reduce our carbon footprint too.
Well, isn't that special, yippie skippie, I mean humans are basically as Arthur C.
Clarke calls them, "carbon-based bi-peds" - yes that's right humans are made out of carbon, well, water and some other stuff too of course.
But if you want to eliminate your carbon footprint you better be rolling along in a wheel chair my friend, because god help you if you take a step, and lay that carbon-based human foot on the sand.
Okay so, we see that the scandals in Europe with carbon trading shows that they couldn't make it work without massive fraud right out of the gate.
Still, now China thinks they will have a go at it, but that's as crazy as the US attempting such a thing.
And even if the US is now backing down and backing away from this carbon trading scheme, some new players want to trade water credits.
That's right not the air you humans exhale, but the water you drink too! Brilliant I say, just brilliant, and for this we'll all have to pay.
There was an interesting article titled "A Carbon Pioneer Dips Toe in Water" by James Bunge published on July 18, 2011 in the Wall Street Journal which stated; "Richard Sandor wants to use financial markets to tackle water allocation of scare water supplies in parts of the US and Canada.
" Yes, we have water scarcity in some parts, but trading it as a commodity, just like Enron traded energy, no thanks, as that only has led to higher prices, rolling blackouts, conjured up scarcity, and just think what that would mean for water supplies? Indeed, I hope you all will rethink this and consider my warnings, history, comments, and concerns here.
If you have a decent debate point, please shoot me an email at your earliest convenience.