Monday, March 24, 2008

Commentary - Timothy Carney: Going short on America, long on Gore agenda

Warning: You may want to put on your tin-foil hat.
Or, on the other hand, maybe it's time for a populist uprising* a la Jefferson:“Every generation needs a new revolution.”
The University of Virginia is a pretty good source on the old boy.
Or maybe: Toga Party.
From the D.C. Examiner:

Julian Robertson, the legendary hedge fund manager, has placed a big bet on the long-term decline of the U.S. economy. Additionally, Robertson is invested in the nuclear energy industry and in Chinese biofuels. He’s also launched an aggressive lobbying campaign to pass federal legislation instituting mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions.

Whether his enthusiastic backing of the Al Gore agenda of constricting fossil fuel use is a way to strengthen his bet against the U.S. economy, an effort to boost his nuclear or biofuels positions, or simply — as the media have put it — philanthropy, is hard to decipher.

But Robertson’s story and the debate over climate change policy reveals the enormous double standard in discussions of regulation and government control: While the anti-regulation side always has its motives questioned, the pro-regulation side is rarely subject to skepticism.

Big businesses have long been lobbying for federal restrictions on greenhouse gases. Enron, General Electric, DuPont, Goldman Sachs and many top energy companies have lobbied hard for “cap-and-trade” laws that would impose federal restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions by manufacturers and power plants, but allow firms to buy or sell excess emissions credits. In many of these cases, it’s easy to see the financial motive of these “socially responsible” corporations.>>>MORE

*With apologies to The Bard, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the rentseekers".