EnviroEconomics.ca

In reading this one would think that we are on the verge of the next great ponzi scheming structured financing debacle,

The next big scam: carbon dioxide

In referring to the $7.4-billion in fraud that have occurred in the last 18 months in the EU’s carbon market: “It is clear that [carbon trading] fraudsters are fully aware of the potential that trading in intangible commodities has to further their ends. Such goods or services can be traded without the need to be physically moved or transported, which represents an obvious opportunity to frustrate Law Enforcement efforts to track and trace transactions.” So much fraud has been occurring that, Europol estimates, up to 90% of all carbon market volume in some EU nations was related to fraudulent activities.

Permits for CO2, a tasteless, colourless and odourless gas, epitomize an “intangible commodity.” The underlying commodity for these permits, CO2, until recently had few producers, few customers and few commercial uses. With the rise of fears over global warming, governments decided to turn this niche gas into what could soon be the world’s most traded commodity

Can we minimize gaming in the trading market? Probably, given stock market regulators routinely set the conditions to minimize fraud and then enforce these. And does the “intangibility” of carbon necessarily lead to fraud? If carbon can be counted and then reconciled, is it truly intangible? Company valuations are typically based on intangibles, like goodwill, and product pipelines are always intangible as in pharmaceuticals. And don’t get me going on how the magic of technology drives tech valuations. So the fact that carbon is “intangible” does not necessarily lend itself to fraud. Stock markets work on intangibles on a minute-by-minute basis.

In the end, the prevalence of fraud is about instrument choice: with the choice of carbon markets over carbon tax, one is necessarily trading off market gaming for inept government spending. Trading is what most people want given aversion to tax, and so one has to live with immature markets, speculation, volatility and gaming. With each layer of the carbon trading onion revealed, it is no wonder folks are drifting back to carbon taxes.