I have relatives, too, who, when the tax authorities figure out what they have been doing, make it illegal.

No one maintains these people are not very clever. They are. They also create disasters if not regulated sufficiently. I don’t buy all of Taibbi’s article either, but I do think we need a serious look at what has gone wrong in the markets – why are we bailing out billionaires for situations they have created theselves? A few – very few – dispossessions of wealth might sharpen minds wonderfully.

The cap and trade is a scam and it is not required “In order to protectthe oplanet” from global warning or anything else. However I take issue with the arguments advanced in the Rolling Stone article and used here to make your points. I know GS quite well, they are the envy of the Street because they have an approach to trading the markets that is superior to the apporches followed by other formns. Goldmans cannot manufactore bubbles nay more than they can turn water into wine. They can, and do, however anticipate where money flows are going and generally get there in time to make money and get out before the correction. This is not criminal. It is smart trading. (Quantrill’s Maxim – when asked the secret of his success on the battlefiled – “Git thar the fuhstest, with the mostest!”

As fas as the cap and trade the way the market works is for polluters to buy pollution allowances from folks who have a positive balance on their carbon account, that is they pollutre less and so can sell their pollution credits to the guys that run a dirtier process. The scheme allows market-makers like Goldmans to make money on the “spread” bewteen bid and offer prices. They do not get to keep the whole premium. The premium is exchanged between end-polluters.

Because Goldmans has large private equity intersts some of these firms may end up being net buyers or sellers of carbion credits. However this is not why Goldmans invested in those businesses.

Bottom Line: They are not as evil as the article makes out. They are however, much smarter than the article implies.

Robert Kyosaki has a new book he is writing on the web. In it he derides the bailout as a scheme to keep the billionaires and bankers from losing money. It has nothing to do with helping the rest of us. We will be looted for the next 100 years for this bailout and the cap and trade is the means to that end. In fact, we will pay twice. It looks like most of the revenues from cap and trade will go to the bankers, barons and billionaires while the government will be raising our taxes (or inflation) against our reduced income to pay for the bailout.

Let’s go back and try to figure out who it was that first proposed a carbon tax!