Wall Street
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Bill Clinton says smart energy policy could have avoided the financial meltdown
Henry Farrell has an interesting account of a discussion session Bill Clinton held with a group of bloggers. This jumped out: Clinton’s basic argument was that the [financial] crisis was one of an overleveraged Wall Street system which emphasized the volume of transactions, and in which people were rewarded for chasing risky deals, and in […]
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Taking the red tape out of green power
Adam Stein predicts that the financial meltdown will cool the ardor for carbon legislation, and I agree. But that doesn’t mean that policymakers will throw up their hands. Here are my predictions. One, the framing will shift from making fossil fuels more expensive (e.g. putting a price on carbon, a carbon tax, etc.) to making […]
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The financial crisis, how we got here, and who knows what to do about it
David Roberts recently said about the current financial crisis: • Nobody clearly understands how we got in this situation. • Nobody clearly understands what situation we are in. • Nobody clearly understands what’s going to happen next. The first and second were, I think, serious errors. Dean Baker predicted this back in September of 2002 […]
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The financial sector and the ‘real economy’ aren’t that far removed
Sean has done an estimable job knocking down some of the more piqued reactions to the financial bailout in comments, but this really is a topic that deserves above-the-fold treatment. The crisis raises a host of big-picture questions about the proper role of oversight in the financial industry, but wherever the blame for the current […]
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Friends of the Earth says anti-regulation approach causes environmental destruction
Friends of the Earth issued a statement today arguing against the Bush administration’s proposed $700 billion bailout of the troubled U.S. financial system. “This financial crisis has exposed the right wing’s anti-regulation philosophy as an abject failure,” said Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder. “This hands-off approach to managing the economy has resulted in […]
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Is the financial crisis more dire than the climate crisis?
Not even close. If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment. So warned IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri last fall when the IPCC released its major multi-year report synthesizing our understanding of climate science. And remember, […]
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Ramblings on the financial crisis
Based on my own extensive analysis of the ongoing financial crisis, I’ve come to the following conclusions: Nobody clearly understands how we got in this situation. Nobody clearly understands what situation we are in. Nobody clearly understands what’s going to happen next. Despite all this, every single human being with access to a keyboard and […]
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One trillion for billionares and pennies for solar?
I was going to post on the money we are pouring into this bailout compared to what we get for green investment. But John McGrath said it for me: …The very first things Barack Obama should do when inaugurated is 1) propose legislation to the U.S. Congress creating single-payer healthcare in America, and 2) initiate […]
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A weak economy brings a diminished appetite for curbs on carbon emissions
The Freakonomics blog offers up a long-ish but lucid discussion of the ongoing financial crisis. I recommend the whole thing, but in a nutshell: Financial institutions borrow money all the time to fund their investments. When the real estate bubble burst, a lot of those investments lost value rapidly, leaving banks such as Bear Stearns […]
