Obama May Levy Carbon Tax to Cut the U.S. Deficit, HSBC Says
By Mathew Carr – Bloomberg News
Barack Obama may consider introducing a tax on carbon emissions to help cut the U.S. budget deficit after winning a second term as president, according to HSBC Holdings Plc.
A carbon tax starting at $20 a ton of carbon dioxide equivalent and rising at about 6 percent a year could raise $154 billion by 2021, Nick Robins, an analyst at the bank in London, said today in an e-mailed research note, citing Congressional Research Service estimates.
“Applied to the Congressional Budget Office’s 2012 baseline, this would halve the fiscal deficit by 2022,” Robins said.
h/t to WUWT reader “dp”
and that money will be going in whose pocket?
It still won’t make much of a dent in $16 trillion (and rising).
Idiot! A tax isn’t going to cut the deficit. It’s simply another cost of doing business, which is passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices and bills. Consumers then spend less on other items. It’s a push pull world. Worse, a carbon tax will make EVERYTHING more expensive, not simply electricity, but every single thing we eat and purchase.
Oh, that’ll help. If he does this he further proves he the intelligence concerning economic policy of a slug.
Deb Scott says:
November 7, 2012 at 8:27 am
and that money will be going in whose pocket?
Uh, worse – whose pockets will it come out of?
I’m not all that good at Math, but how does $154bn halve a fiscal deficit of over a $1,000bn a year by the year 2020?
He would have to get it through a Republican House unless he could find a regulatory way to do it with the EPA (if I were a betting man….)
…and besides, he won’t get it through either congress or the senate.
and so it starts…..
Can you spell R-E-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E.
154 billions a year? Still, that’s not enough to overcome spending deficit unless we completely gutted military budget… which is Obama’s goal anyway.
Deutsche Bank shut down their emissions trading group. Looks like HSBC is trying to keep theirs going. Good luck with that.
Yesterday I voted for change and hoped nothing like this was going to happen. That didn’t work out very well.
Doesn’t have a prayer to get through the Republican-controlled House or Representatives.
Dead on Arrival.
Obama’s angle is to penalize energy intensive companies through the EPA, by declaring CO2 to be a pollutant. But such action would be challenged in the courts.
Four more years of gridlock.
Kurt in Switzerland
The availability of cheap energy is one of the primary movers of any economy. Make it expensive and the economy will not move, it is really about all that simple. Perhaps it is time to get busy with the thorium reactors.
Obama cannot “levy” anything. He can propose it. It will be DOA in the House.
Brilliant! Destroy the economy to reduce the deficit!
“A carbon tax starting at $20 a ton of carbon dioxide equivalent and rising at about 6 percent a year could raise $154 billion by 2021” … until it hammers the economy by way more than $154 billion by 2021.
Static economic analysis should be illegal.
When people pay more in one part of the economy, they spend less in another. All this will do is reduce tax revenues from other sources while adding an extra bureaucracy.
At least the carbon tax I pay in B.C. Is revenue neutral and did not raise taxes overall.
Taxing poor people’s energy! Balance the budget on the backs of the poor, truly progressive. Like any of that money would be used to reduce the deficit anyway, just more money for our marxist dictator to kick back to his green energy cronies.
[snip – flame bait]
All these p****s who thought they were saving the world are going to get a real wake up right about now.
In the end it is all about getting an extra dollar out of everyone.
Wonder how long it will take them to realize they have been played?
Taxes are only introduced to provide for the maintenance of increased debt. At current ratios, the expected revenue from a carbon tax will support?/?justify ~$2 trillion of additional near term debt. The current accounting cost structures for the existing state of our economic system, however, will not allow $2trillion of new debt to be wealth productive because commerce and cost inflation are now intrinsically motivated by the heavy borrowing costs required for personal and enterprise consumption. …The federal Water Mill of tax revenue and government services has become so onerous that it seriously infringes upon the ability of state and local government water mills to manage efficient cash flow/ wealth production.
And spending the money to reduce the deficit is going to benefit the environment and combat climate change how?
Lets certainly hope we get a carbon fee (or tax) ASAP. With nuclear power, waste disposal is a significant portion of the total cost. Similarly with fossil fuel based power, the cost of CO2 waste disposal into the atmoshere should also be included and then let the free market system do the rest.
This, of course, explains why the Fossil Fuel industries deny the science behind AGW. If they did admit that our increased CO2 levels are contributing to global warming, they would have no argument against this “waste disposal” cost. Thus they do their best to try to fool and confuse the public on this issue for as long as they can. In the meantime they make tons of money with BAU.
Now that our President has another and his last term, I hope he has the courage to do all of the right things wrt AGW. The going will still be very difficult, however, because the scientifically illiterate forces of our country seem to include a major portion of Corporate American whose major interests always seem to be squewed towards the short term benefit of shareholders. Up to now, those forces have controlled our elected officials in Washington. With Omama’s reelection and with the addition of Elizabeth Warren to the Senate, lets hope that things are finally about to change big time wrt the AGW problem. Who knows – one might even dare to hope that the likes of Andrew Watts might also eventually see the obvious science associated the AGW problem and begin to be part of the solution.