“Some market players have expressed concern that the $16 million mistake overstated the real demand for carbon permits and set the price for carbon artificially high (“settlement” price of the first auction was about nine cents higher than the $10 floor price). It was a gaffe that ensured the auction would sell out, and a “hitch” that was never made public by regulators.”
Whether in public or in secret, carbon-credit trading is a government-mandated market in absolute fraud. That’s true of the European scheme, indeed obvious in the European scheme. I don’t know how far down this primrose path Australia has gone, but it will be true in Australia’s scheme if it continues. And we see it taking shape in California. Wealth passed around, with much of it lost on the way, but producing neither goods nor services.
Well, that’s why I’m a conservative-libertarian.