isramart: The Rubber Duckies: Deutsche Bank’s countdown to the carbon bubble

Isramart:

This year’s Corporate Rubber Duck Award goes to Deutsche Bank and the world’s financial institutions. The crass willingness of the world’s banks and investment houses to jump on to the global warming crusade reached a new low of irrational exuberance this week with the erection in Manhattan of an eight-story high Deutsche Bank carbon counter. The rolling digital clock flies through digits at the rate of about 1000 tonnes a second —the rate at which greenhouse gasses are accumulating in the atmosphere.

For a second yesterday afternoon, the counter stood at 3,642,124,591,652 — before it moved on. Why would Deutsche Bank do this? Because in those numbers Deutsche Bank, and all the other big financial blunderers who delivered today’s financial crisis, are gearing up to cash in on the next big wave, carbon markets and green investing.

To banks and financial players now lobbying Washington, Ottawa and governments everywhere, the rolling carbon counter is a rolling dollar counter. At 1,000 tonnes a second, if each tonne could be hit with a $50 carbon tax or carbon trading fee, that’s $50,000 a second, which works out to $2-billion a month. The potential, obviously, is in the trillions of dollars — bigger, even, than the global sub-prime crash.

Citigroup, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs are all part of campaigns to push the Obama administration to adopt carbon trading.

Earlier this year, Kevin Parker, head of Deutsche Asset Management, urged Washington to give “direction and boost” to global warming policy and carbon trading. “The nation is at a rare crossroads. With the right direction and boost from Washington, American business and investors can take a lead role in the global clean energy future.”

So much for claims by David Suzuki that the world’s corporate capitalists are leading a conspiracy against global warming science. Big business isn’t fighting global warming; it’s the new vanguard.

When financial institutions join government in reshaping the economic landscape — as they did with the U.S. housing market, based on various junk-science financial models — what happens? The sub-prime housing bubble has burst. Get ready for the sub-prime carbon bubble.