Blain’s Morning Porridge – Nov 15th 2019
“Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”
Nov 15th
As it’s a Friday I am contractually entitled to have a rant and whine about whatever I want to write about. Which, today, isn’t really the cut and thrust of markets.
To be brutally frank – we all know what the problems are: Too much money in the markets pushing up the prices of market assets. The fact is too much of that too much money is owned by too few people who use their too much money to buy all these financial assets. These too few people who own all the financial assets get richer everyday as their too much money makes their too many financial assets even more valuable. And these too few people get even richer by getting even more too much money to put into the already too expensive financial markets by “persuading” central banks to keep rates low, to buy financial assets through QE, and get their in-the-pocket politicians to enact tax cuts so their too much money is even more too much money…
With me so far??
Meanwhile, politicians pay for the too much money they give to too rich people, by taking it away from the much more numerous too many too poor people through Austerity. The too many people who don’t have any assets and owe any money they have to the people who have too much money and too many assets – aren’t happy. They blame society, they blame governments and as they get even more unhappy they get angry. These too poor too angry people then get very angry and start blaming people. which is what is happening across the globe..
Still there?…
Ultimately, it gets messy. The too many poor people set up a very sharp razor in the centre of a square in the capital of their country and start teaching the too few people with too much money and too many assets, that these are essentially worthless if their heads are cut off…
You get the drift?
I could go on, but I think I’ve said enough about UK, US, European or anywhere else’s politics, trade wars, or pondering why bond yields are too low and stock prices too high, why unicorns are doomed, why everything is pants and everything is marvellous, or other such fripperies like rising income inequality or the iniquity of the Gig Economy.
Let’s talk about important stuff instead..
I watched a fascinating documentary on BBC 4 last night. (Yes, I know I’m not supposed to watch BBC anymore – it’s Woke Central, and there is a danger watching it might cloud my cynicism.) The programme was about how 1000s of emails between Climate Scientists were hacked in 2010. The hackers hit with pin-point accuracy; a few lines were extracted, highlighted and edited out of context to suggest a massive climate change coverup was underway.
It showed film-clips of harassed university professors being shouted down by paid lobbyists and ignorant politicians demanding they should be sacked, claiming a warming planet is a deliberate lie. In one particular scene a climate scientist breaks down on camera as he describes the threats he received to his family, made by trolls calling him a commie stooge.
Why did it happen?
The leak was coordinated to derail the Copenhagen climate conference just a few weeks later in 2010. The doubts it triggered delayed and compromised a global climate accord for years. The Saudis stood up at the conference and used a single out of context line from a hacked email – which was actually about deleting a curve from the illustration on the front page of a climate report – to “conclusively demonstrate Climate Change is a hoax”. Gosh.. why would the Saudi’s do that? They used the irrefutable truth the climate scientists had lied to demand greater global spending on Oil and Gas.
Later investigations revealed the scientists had done nothing wrong, and a separate scientific investigation by an American university – funded by Oil and Gas interests, and led by one of the guys who had most vociferously said the earlier results were a hoax – concluded the original science was absolutely correct and spot on. One of America’s leading former climate change denies said on the programme: “they were Right, Global Warming is real.”
Yet, these leaked, out of context, edited hacked emails are still quoted today as “unimpeachable” evidence that global warming is fake-news. Although the hacked together stitched up emails have been utterly discredited as evidence of climate untruths, we still see the same lies retold time and time again. I know that’s true – just a few weeks ago a fund manager sent me a rebuttal to a recent morning porridge telling me my comments on the Need for Climate Cure solutions were rubbish, that the science had been doctored, sending me an article that referred back to the 2010 email hack as proof the scientists were lying about climate change.
You would never do due diligence on a potential deal and rely on hacked emails that had been doctored, edited and mis-quoted to invest in a deal. You would never ignore the advice of scientists and technologists telling you facts because you preferred to believe a glib salesmen telling you all the negative factual advice they were giving you was wrong.
No one was ever charged with the email hack. It was done professionally, there was clear insider knowledge of the email chains between scientists. The way the emails were deftly dissected to discredit climate science says it was done by scientists who knew what they were doing, strongly suggesting it was business interests likely to suffer if climate change was validated. The speed at which the Saudi’s embraced the claims says it all… although it could have been any oil, mining, gas major or grouping.
I doubt it was an oil major – they are smart enough to realise their long-term future and prosperity will be in embracing climate change and the tech it will spawn. I’ve met executives form oil services firms who are genuinely excited about projects like carbon capture and sequestration.
While I happen to believe in the science, and climate and environmental threats are real, it doesn’t actually matter. The mere fact the science suggests its real, the electorate believe scientists over politicians. It is a real threat in their minds and decision making. The tech exists and can be developed to address it, makes it a massive opportunity. I sincerely believe Climate Cure tech will be massive, creating jobs, growth and giving a massive bonus from a cleaners more healthy environment. I’ll be writing much much more on this in coming weeks!
I have a plan!
So, who was it that leaked the emails that derailed a possible 2010 climate change agreement? I guess we will never know. But I’ve always wondered at Donald Trump pulling out the Paris Climate Accords. My republican chums will tell me it was to protect American business and Jobs. Of course it was – but that can be done with a reasoned, scientific and rational approach to the POTENTIAL threat of climate change.
If anyone can explain Trump’s logic, please do… I wonder… no.. surely not…
Six things to read today:
FT – Credit Market fears of downgrades have not materialised
FT – Donald Trump asks Supreme Court to block subpoena for tax returns
WSJ – House Speaker Pelosi says Trump’s withholding of State Aid to Ukraine Amounted to Bribery
WSJ – No More Easy Profits as China’s Venture Capital Boom Fizzles
Bloomberg – Germany sticks to debt free budget
Foreign Policy – Is the USA Really Leaving The Paris Climate Agreement?
Out of time, back to the day job, and have a great weekend.
Bill Blain
Shard Capital