Ted Auch

Clean Energy, Clean Coal, Foreign Oil, Middle East Instability, blah blah blah blah blah.

The 2 graphs presented here derived from the US Mine Health & Safety Administration show the true cost of coal. Since data was first recorded back in the 1930s we have lost at least (ie Average Annual Derivation) 420,960 men due to coal mine fatalities and 25,633, 151 have been injured. As to the severity of the latter I wasn’t able to get my hands on how many resulted in men that were Functionally Dead. With more and more union busting and people like Don Blankenship the owner of Massey Energy the company that oversaw the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia making no bones about his distaste and most likely hatred of unions fatalities will rise in my opinion. Yes mechanization and strip-mining has resulted in a decline in fatalities but there has been - in recent years - an increase in large and broadly fatal “accidents”. The Upper Big Branch was a non-union mine thanks to Mr. Blankenship’s machinations. I am not promoting across-the-board unionization but I am worried that erosion of unions where their presence is required may prove economically costly to miners and in the worst case scenario Upper Big Branch Reduxes throughout Appalachia. There may be clean ways to burn coal but it’s extraction is dirty on so many levels not least of which is the fact that it robs communities of their fathers, brothers, uncles, little league coaches, and more importantly their collective spirit. West Virginians and coal mining communities writ large consist of proud, determined, stubborn, and resourceful people. However, the Paradox of Plenty (ie, The Resource Curse) caught them off-guard with the speculative and nefarious vultures swooping in to promise riches that have yet to be delivered. We need to stop stigmatizing these communities and start infusing them with capital aimed at a more diversified economic portfolio. I have been to these communities and they are desperate to decouple themselves from Carbonaceous Robber Barons like Don Blankenship.

Enjoy the data I think the figures speak for themselves.

Average Annual Deaths and Injuries:

Average Cumulative Deaths and Injuries:

So with the advent of the neo-capitalist agenda in China circa Deng Xiaoping’s invoking of the Four Modernizations in 1978 we are seeing a new China Same as the Old China. Chairman Xiaoping’s Four Modernizations were meant to fuse the Good of Capitalism with the Supremacy of Mao’s Vision. They addressed Agriculture, Industry, National Defense, and Science & Technology (EARTH TO TEXAS SCHOOLBOARD!!!). Anyway it seems that this fusion has taken what appears to be a pro-bourgeois turn for the worse if a recent piece in The Economist is any indication. Next thing you know we’ll be hearing that the C-Class of China’s Big Four Banks are or will shortly be receiving large bonuses based on short-term, highly leveraged, overly creative, and socially useless financial instruments. NO WAIT THAT COULD NEVER HAPPEN!

“The ruling by Pudong’s district government—Circular 301, as it is officially called—allows these subsidies to be paid to “qualified financial talents working at qualified financial institutions”. Upon approval by regulators, senior managers can receive a reimbursement of 40% of their taxes, plus a housing subsidy. That pushes their tax rate down to 27%, still higher than Hong Kong’s 15% and Singapore’s 20% but well below what a banker would pay in New York (44%) or London (soon to be 50%) or for that matter Tokyo (50%) or Seoul (35%).

Bankers who are not quite so important get a not-so-grand tax break, roughly half as large. More junior staff get nothing. The same system of targeted personal-tax breaks for senior executives was apparently successfully used in Beijing to entice financial firms to move from one side of the Forbidden City to the other, to an area called Financial Street. Once the leading global firms had moved their offices, the tax rebates were allowed to lapse. The same will probably happen in Shanghai. But for now, if you’re a capitalist-roader, the people’s party is pretty hard to beat.”

The following is from last week’s Economist:

“Geoengineering is an umbrella term for large-scale actions intended to combat the climate-changing effects of greenhouse-gas emissions without actually curbing those emissions. Like genetic engineering was in the 1970s, the very idea of geoengineering is controversial. Most of those who fear climate change would prefer to stop it by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Geoengineers argue that this may prove insufficient and that ways of tinkering directly with the atmosphere and the oceans need to be studied. Some would like to carry out preliminary experiments, and wish to do so in a clear regulatory framework so that they know what is allowed and what is not.”

What Geoengineering really is is an ingenious group of scientific avenues that will allow society writ large to shrug off it’s (our) responsibilities and hand the myriad of them to future generations. I absolutely believe in some of the techniques/concepts that fall under the Geoengineering umbrella BUT only if society is willing to embrace significant across-the-board electrical, consumption, and natural resource stewardship austerity measures. Otherwise Geoengineering allows us to circumvent a much deserved bout of self-flagellation. When the facts change we must change our mind. Aside from an unfortunate obfuscation of the data at the University of East Anglia the facts have changed for the worse ergo - Geoengineering aside - it is time for us to change our minds and embrace a Blended Climate Change Amelioration Portfolio (BCCAP). This will include anathema (i.e. Nuclear, Geoengineering, Genetic Engineering) to some environmentalists - including myself - but in return it must include the aforementioned flagellation and a bullish embrace of wind, CH4 digestion, ecosystem appreciation vis a vis development or agribusiness, and biofuels that embrace the role of plant-root carbon sequestration.

How bout this eye-catcher from the Environmental Law Institute.

It shows US Energy Subsidies, with $2.3 Billion to Carbon Capture and Storage, $12.2 Billion to Traditional Renewables, $16.8 to Corn Ethanol, and $70.2 Billion to Traditional Fossil Fuels (energy_subsidies_black_not_green1). I wonder how these numbers will change with the recent hydraulic fracturing love affair and the Marcellus/Bakken Shale formations in the Northeast and Upper Midwest Respectively.  Another example of a 5:1 Ratio here in the US (Okay 5.75:1 you get the point!).

The prevalence of the 5:1 Ratio here in the US is quite worrisome given where we see it (i.e. See previous posts).

“prompting the rating agency Moody’s to threaten a downgrade in America’s bond ratings”

I am not an economist or an expert in finance, rather I am a soil scientist, but I am wondering from the outside looking in why you all even put any stock in the rating agencies any more, Didn’t Michael Lewis in “Panic” and elsewhere thoroughly debunk the validity of these completely subjective TripleA ratings? I am not implying that the US economic standing is not teatering….it is indeed! But to rely on one of the “Big 3″ to validate such a claim….well that would not have held water if I were to try to defend it to my dissertation committee. Just a thought.

Two things I have learned since this crisis about regulation…Its all about the Big 3:

1. Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is basically run by Ernst & Young, KPMG, and Deloite Touche.

2. Moody’s, Fitch, and Standard & Poors control the rating process in the US.

Isn’t this worth an anti-trust glance or two or three?

Is the output from these companies valid in any way if we don’t have access to their methods?

There is now very serious talk about a European Central Fund, which would largely be supported by the profligate ways of Eastern and Southern Europe.

I wonder how this EMF would be funded? Would it be as its supporters claim a function of a 1% tax on all money a given EU country has about the Maastricht Treaty Debt and Deficit to GDP requirements? How long would a country have to be above the 60 and 3% thresholds, respectively. I feel as though countries with stout track records would be given substantial temporal leashes while the PIIGS would be put on a spit and roasted within months and prayed upon by speculators. Look if you go ahead with this EMF and the Lisbon Treaty you are opening yourself up to a common currency aggregate that has no ceiling (i.e., a global currency). Talk about too big to fail! Or is it too interconnected to fail?

“The EMF could be run along similar governance lines to the IMF, by having a professional staff remote from direct political influence and a board with representatives from euro-area countries. Just as the existing fund does, the EMF would conduct regular and broad economic surveillance of member countries. But its main role would be to design, monitor and fund assistance programmes for euro-area countries in difficulties, just as the IMF does on a global scale.”

No way does the highlighted part of the above quote from The Economist article happen! We have reached a point as Steven Roach of Morgan Stanley noted in “Stephen Roach on the Next Asia: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Globalization” where the line between fiscal policy, monetary policy, and politics is imperceptible. It is as if we are redressing the church v. state debate even though we know there is not such thing.

“Countries could, for instance, be charged an annual contribution of 1% of their “excess debt”, the difference between their actual level of public debt and the limit of 60% of GDP agreed on as one of the Maastricht criteria for euro entry. A similar charge could be levied on governments’ excess deficits, the amount exceeding the Maastricht limit of 3% of GDP. Under these parameters the EMF would have accumulated about €120 billion ($163 billion) over the past decade, enough to cover the likely costs of rescuing Greece. These levies are not so big that they make it impossible for offenders to get to grips with their finances. Under this scheme the Greek contribution to an EMF would have been 0.65% of GDP in 2009.”

Another canard. We are being guided by captains that would like to steer the ship towards a single global currency, which as I said would be the ultimate paradox given everyone’s fascination with Too Big To…..(Fill in the blank!).

Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

“I’m a great believer in the wisdom I learned in my first Wall Street job: In God we trust…Everyone else, bring data.”

From The Economist January 14th 2010

“Liberal democratic governments can make all manner of blunders, but they are less likely to commit mass murder. Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize-winning economist, has famously argued that no country with a free press and fair elections has ever had a large famine. And research by those three CFR scholars found that poor autocracies were at least twice as likely as democracies to suffer an economic disaster (defined as a decline of 10% or more in GDP in a year). With no noisy legislatures or robust courts to hold things up, autocracies may be faster and bolder. They are also more accident-prone.”

I wonder how someone who states that “…no country with a free press and fair elections has ever had a large famine.” wins a Nobel in anything let alone theology…..I mean economics. This is the argument you attributed to the economist Amartya Sen. Does Mr. Sen and The Economist for that matter not understand the dangers associated with conflating causation and correlation? Large famines are largely functions of climate, external demand, and agricultural subsidies. Are they related to free press? Doubtful if there is a linear connection. Are they related to fair elections? Probably but this is a correlation that I would not get passed peer-review.

This is architecture on viagra.

I can’t help but wonder if something more long-lasting or as the U.K.’s Adair Turner (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aKeO6gsaeQ_M#) would most likely say “socially useful” could have been done with the materials used to build these phallic symbols of excess and upper 1-2% decoupling from the rest of society? I am sure the folks in Malaysia could think of a couple of things and those that have been displaced from the lower 9th Ward of New Orleans would most assuredly have some ideas for what could be done with the $3.2 billion being spent on NYC’s rising symbol of patriotism 1 Word Trade Center.

Given the recent announcement by President Obama that he will be upping the ante by 30,000 troops in Afghanistan I was left to ponder for what seemed to me a logical question: Mr. President what in your portfolio of beliefs and objectives is worth losing an election for? Do you not have any ideologies that you feel so passionate about that you are willing to sacrifice all or most of your political capital to steward such beliefs across the finish line? I voted for you sir and I am not sure at this point whether you have any convictions you feel so strongly about that you would put your political neck on the line for. That is quite disheartening to me because when I saw you speak on the steps of the Ira Allen Chapel here in Burlington, Vermont in March of 2006 I was convinced that you were a man with a spine, conscience, and an intellect unsurpassed in modern day politics. I still believe that the latter is true but as for your spine and to a lesser degree your conscience I am left wondering what you stand for and what you will fight for to the very end, whether it means political suicide or not.

Show us some fight sir! Show us that the issues you campaigned on are part of your very fiber and not simply the populist rhetoric you knew would get the vote of people like myself. It is beginning to feel like you are ashamed that the left supported you and your “progressive” agenda. That is not the man I saw speak in 2006. That is not the man I promptly told my friend Dennis Ailor would win the presidency in 2008. And that is most assuredly not the man I thought was capable of thinking through some of the most complex issues ever to face an incoming president. Sure you were handed a mess but are you going to continue to compare your administration to the one that preceded you? I would caution against such comparisons given that the bar could not have been set any lower.

Sir you know that the right would gladly fall on their sword for issues like abortion, the sanctity of marriage, gun rights, and the military industrial complex. That is a given and that for better or worse is one thing I respect about the neoclassical and neoconservative movement. When they give speeches in Portland or Corpus Christi you know what you’re gonna get and they make absolutely no apologies for their beliefs. It is time you get a little neocon in you Mr. Obama and by that I mean pick an issue any issue, whether it be health care, climate change, FISA, bank reform, or torture and go to the wall for it. Own the issue sir. Take back any one of these issues from those in your party that are self-hating Democrats. Just like Iraq and Katrina will define George W Bush (and no one else!!) one of these issues will define you and it would be a shame if you let the spineless wing of your party co-opt your presidency.

I and many like me – and I would hasten to guess those on the right – are anxiously or should I say nervously waiting and wondering if you will ever stand up and be accounted for with respect to some of the aforementioned issues. I would suggest firing Geithner, Summers, et al as a start. The left rightly sees them as an extension of the Greenspan-Rubin virus that has infected the nation’s financial services regulations for far too long now and the right won’t support them because….well who cares they just won’t because you do and that is reason enough for them.

Apologizing for our hegemonic history and bowing to Emperor Akihito shows that you are sensitive to our fragile status as a global power and more importantly the proper way in which you interact with others when on their turf. However, tacitly apologizing for being liberal or in any way concerned with the appalling trend in wealth, health, and education distribution in this country makes those of us on the left wonder if we were sold a bill of goods and those on the right question your leadership capabilities, both from a foreign and domestic perspective.

You may be wondering at this point why we don’t have your back on some of these crucial issues? Well all is not lost and believe me if we see fight emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue we will most assuredly get in the ring with you but until then you’ll have to rely on the likes of the Blue Dog Democrats. BTW how’s that working out so far?