Stupid Banker of the Day: HSBC’s Kevin Bourne

European bank HSBC’s dalliance in the U.S. subprime bubble cost its shareholders more than $15 billion in losses. So you might think the bank would be wary of wandering into the next financial bubble — that is the green one. But once again, you would be wrong to apply common sense to today’s financial industry.

Reuters reports today that a large U.S. pension fund is interested in investing in companies in HSBC’s Climate Change Market Index. HSBC equities chief Kevin Bourne told Reuters,

“It doesn’t matter if investors believe in climate change or not, they know it’s a good investment category.”

Apparently, investing in companies that provide tangible value to society is so old-school. It seems to have  been replaced by getting in while the getting is good and getting out before the bubble bursts. But few, including HSBC, seem to have a good track record in that regard.

Bourne added,

“But investors are global and if they can’t find your company, they can’t lend their money to you. The tough question is how to let investors know that you’re involved in climate change.”

HSBC seems not to view its challenge as asking whether investing in dubious climate change schemes is appropriate so much as it is jumping over that due diligence question and onto figuring out how to find the next sucker.

Moving past HSBC’s investment bubble recidivism, there is the question of the unnamed pension fund willing to gamble its assets on climate change scams.

While Bourne would not name the pension fund, he did indicate to Reuters that it was among the four largest: either the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, California Public Employees Retirement System, State of New York Employees’ Retirement System, or the Florida Retirement System.

So the money going into HSBC ‘s green bubble is not that of some private, cowboy investment group; it’s the taxpayer money intended for California, New York or Florida public sector retirees.

Aside from the direct risk of investing in bubbles, there’s the innocent bystander effect. The ongoing subprime bubble-caused financial crisis has already cost state pension funds an estimated $1.3 trillion.The two California public employee retirement systems have so far lost a combined $110 billion — even though the two were never heavily invested in them in the first place. New York and Florida public employee funds have taken similar losses.

The problematic intersection of state pensions funds and global warming has been preliminarily explored in the report, “Pensions in Peril.”

Switching metaphors, maybe Kevin Bourne, HSBC and the rest of the fast-talking, but slow-witted Wall Street crowd ought to step back from, and reconsider pressing the handle that will cause the green vortex that will flush hard-earned taxayer and investor money down the toilet again.

When the green bubble bursts, will there be any money left to pay state retirees?

Sucker play of the day: Greens ‘giving’ on nukes and carbon storage to get climate bill

How — EUPHEMISM ALERT! — “naive” are the nuclear and coal industries? We may soon find out.

Carbon Control Newsreports that an EPA congressional affairs attorney told a Washington, DC think tank audience that,

Even members [of Congress] with the most progressive constituencies are “willing to give up their efforts to hinder” nuclear and [carbon capture and storage] “in order to serve the higher good of getting carbon policies enacted.”

It’s a wonder no one in the audience choked on their lunch at that one.

I have little doubt that the nuclear and coal industries will accept this statement at face value and proceed to walk into the bear trap that is greenhouse gas regulation.

But the greens will never allow carbon capture and storage (CCS) and they will never allow more nuclear power to come on line — no matter how much they seem to nod their heads now in order to get a bill.

The greens may say they will tolerate these things to get a climate bill, but the greens’ word never has been, is not and will never be good or binding on them.

No matter what language is included in whatever bill, in the end, the greens will find grandmothers and children to lay down in front of the bulldozers — and that will be the end of new nukes and CCS.

If the coal industry wants to survive and if the nuclear power industry wants to maintain its 20%-share of the U.S. power mix, both must treat the greens like the mortal enemies that they are. When it comes to the greens’ naked aggression, it’s crush or be crushed.

As between industry and the greens, my money is on the greens — at least for right now since, like Stalin in 1924 and Hitler in 1938, they are only only ones who actually understand that there are no rules to the for-all-the-marbles game they are playing.

Cap-And-Trade: Al Gore’s Cash Cow

Today’s lead editorial in Investor’s Business Daily about Al Gore’s profiteering at consumer/taxpayer expense mentions Steve Milloy’s new book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.

As IBD points out:

Gore’s altruism claim [during last week’s congressional hearing] is phony. According to a March 6 Bloomberg report, Gore invested $35 million of his own money not in green nonprofits, but with the very profitable Capricorn Investment Group LLC, a Palo Alto, Calif., firm that directs clients to green investments and invests in makers of environmentally friendly products.

Biomass trash: It makes no gas, gas, gas?

It was scorned in the Katrina hurricane,
And we howled in the North Dakota rain,
But it’s all right now, it’s CO2 gas,
But it’s all right, biomass trash makes no gas, gas gas…*

* – Suggested shower lyrics for Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) sung to the tune of a Rolling Stones’ hit in wishful rationalization of why its OK to support global warming alarmism AND the burning of biomass for electricity.

Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) says that, “The climate crisis facing the world is no joke, and closing our eyes to the problems created by it doesn’t make them go away.” Rep. Baird is referring, of course, to the supposed problem of manmade emissions of carbon dioxide. So since he believes that we are a crisis caused by manmade CO2, you might reasonably think that Rep. Baird would be all for a climate bill that dramatically reduces rather than condones CO2 emissions.

Instead, however, Rep. Baird says that support from Northwest states for the Waxman-Markey climate bill is being “alienated” by the bill’s restriction on the burning of biomass (i.e., scrub wood and brush) from federal lands for electricity generation, according to a report from Carbon Control News (April 29). The Waxman-Markey-loving Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council oppose biomass burning as undermining the bill’s chief goal — that is, reducing manmade greenhouse gas emissions.

Rep. Baird calls the Waxman-Markey ban a

“bad, foolish, irresponsible policy”

that he will

“work to the utmost of my ability to defeat.”

About the greens, Rep. Baird says,

It’d be nice if some of these folks lived in reality for once.

A worthy wish for us all, Rep. Baird.

‘No surprise’ of the day: Linking flu with climate change

Reuters reports,

Weather experts are studying swine flu to see if climate could influence its spread and severity.

Determining the impact of cold, heat, dryness and humidity on the H1N1 strain — which has killed up to 149 people in Mexico and had milder effects elsewhere — could illuminate the countries and regions most vulnerable to infection.

It’s development, not climate, stupid… not that the greens care.

Utility execs fret Obama climate policies

Reuters reports,

Less than half of utility executives support the Obama Administration’s plan to make the United States a leader on climate change and are concerned about the impact related policies will have on industry profits, according to a survey released on Monday.

Maybe one day these cowards will stop stop fretting and start fighting back?

California chucks Commerce Clause: Proposes tax on out-of-state fossil fuel use

California officials are proposing to levy a tax on imported electricity that is produced by the use of fossil fuels, according to a report in Carbon Control News.

This move should be held to violate the Commerce Clause of the Constitution in that the goal is to make in-state wind and solar produced electricity more competitive with less expensive out-of-state fossil fuel-generated electricity.

In the 1935 case of BALDWIN v. G. A. F. SEELIG, INC., the Supreme Court held that states may not practice economic protectionism.

Capitalist Pig on Green Hell: ‘Gutsy and brash… ballsy and well-researched’

Jonathan Hoenig, the brains behind CapitalistPig.com, calls Steve Milloy’s new book Green Hell “gutsy and brash” and “ballsy and well-researched” in a Smartmoney.com review.