Awesome Story of the Day
California Cap-and-trade plan may be put on hold because they failed to do an Environmental impact study. LOLOLOL
The California Air Resources Board violated state environmental law in 2008 when it adopted a comprehensive plan to reduce greenhouse gases and again last year when it passed cap-and-trade regulations, a San Francisco Superior Court judge has ruled in a tentative decision.
If the decision is made final, California would be barred from implementing its ambitious plan to combat global warming until it complies with portions of the California Environmental Quality Act, though it is not yet clear what the air board would have to do to be in compliance. The state’s plan, which implements AB32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, would reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
Mesa Econoguy:
OR,
Flash crash II caused by regulators:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/us-flashcrash-idUSTRE7134PI20110204
(Reuters) - Experts trying to figure out how to avoid another "flash crash" are considering big changes to the U.S. stock marketplace, and one is recommending special rebates during times of stress and a crackdown on off-exchange "dark" trading.
Robert Engle, a Nobel Prize-winning finance professor at New York University, said in an interview that the regulator-appointed panel has not yet decided on its final recommendations, though he expects them to be made public at a February 18 meeting.
The focus, he said, should be that buyers all but vanished during the May 6 market plunge, abandoning investors when liquidity was most needed.
This could be fixed by allowing exchanges to boost the rebates it pays for standing buy and sell orders, and by squeezing more of the trading that takes place in anonymous "dark pools" into the public markets.
"Liquidity is the key issue we should be talking about and that the recommendations need to deal with," Engle, one of eight members of an advisory committee formed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said.
During the unprecedented flash crash, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged nearly 700 points before rebounding, briefly wiping out some $1 trillion in paper capital and exposing deep flaws in the high-speed electronic market.
Engle's comments -- including concerns over little communication among panel members in the last few months -- offer the first clear insight into what the high-profile committee could recommend.
SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro, having made a handful of adjustments since May to stabilize markets and quell investor anxiety, said on Friday the agency will unveil more changes this spring. The committee's recommendations could inform these.
Engle said he has pushed for rules that would come into effect when markets are under duress and in need of more liquidity, allowing exchanges to boost both the rebates they pay for orders as well as the fees they charge traders.
"You would have a peak-load pricing model, much like the way you use peak-load prices to adjust traffic across a bridge or freeway," Engle said in a telephone interview from NYU's Stern School of Business.
February 4, 2011, 11:10 pmMesa Econoguy:
If there's 1 thing Nobel prize winning economists understand, it's panic-mode selling.
Yeah.
February 4, 2011, 11:16 pmJohn:
I don't know what the fuss about regulations in CA is all about. Their return to 1990 CO2 levels is all but guaranteed. Across the board their policies ensure a continued exodus out of CA. Eventually they will get back to 1990 population levels with cleaner technology.
February 5, 2011, 7:15 amastonerii:
Its just a temporary setback.
February 5, 2011, 9:15 amMatt:
This reminds me of that story in the last week or so about how the SEC's books weren't up to par according to the GAO. I don't have a link handy but a quick search could bring it up. Simply beyond parody.
February 5, 2011, 10:21 amJohn Moore:
Sadly, this goes to show how the environmental regulations and resulting bureaucracy have tied all of American in knots. Progress is impeded in all manner of activities, from building roads, to building power plants, to building refineries, to drilling for oil, to making worthless solar power plants. Environmentalists have devastated long existing farms in the central valley by protecting what Sarah Palin cleverly called "bait fish" in her address last night. They even blocked a refinery out in the desert by Mobile, AZ using "environmental racism" even though there is no minority population in the area!
For every on of those obstructions, there's an interest group willing to fight, and a bureaucracy with its own turf interests willing to help them.
To see them fighting amongst each other may be pleasant schadenfreude, but is a scary indicator of the terrible state we have reached - not just in CA, but the whole country.
February 5, 2011, 10:59 amSkunkboy:
What a horrible article over there at sfgate.com. These people are so invested with labeling carbon a toxic and repeating talking points, the big issue is lost because the reporters get so confused over their own rhetoric.
The lawsuit is over how cap-n-trade allows carbon emitting industries to purchase credits and sometimes emit more carbon and toxic air than before. The right-to-emit-carbon credits are purchased from out of town, out of state, or from Mexico.
Carbon NO2 does not cause health problems. Toxic air does. The point of California's AB32 is to reduce the world-wide amount of carbon in the atmosphere to solve Global Warming, not reduce harmful (to people) air pollution.
February 9, 2011, 9:23 am