Chicago Climate Exchange drops 50%, new record low

Banks are exiting the carbon market like Deutsche bank:
http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USTRE67A3JK20100811
That and the current carbon prizes tells us that for the moment the climate fight is over:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/How-you-know-the-climate-fight-is-over-101807708.html
So why is it that I still have this gut feeling that our political establishment will give it an ultimate push to shove this cap & trade monster down our throats?
Blinded by absolute power these guys will push their limits to get this done, even if they go down trying.
This still isn’t over.

There is Quebec, Ontario and British-Columbia that is entering to the Western Climate Initiative. At this price, they will buy some carbon credit for sell it at a higher price. Am I correct???

This is a good sign.
But now watch for the bail-out/subsidies.

I wonder if Al is now shorts less…

The U.S. DOE (Department of Energy) has just spent $253 million to fund a CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) project for Air Products, an industrial gases supplier. The project (see link below) will capture CO2 from two existing process plants in an oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, then compress the CO2 into a pipeline for use in enhanced oil recovery. The two process plants are SMR – Steam Methane Reformers – that produce hydrogen from natural gas. The hydrogen is used in several refining processes.
The CCS systems will reportedly capture 1 million tons of CO2 per year. If merchant CO2 is sold for $30 per ton, as some sources report, then the Carbon Emissions Credit must be approximately $45 per ton to obtain a total revenue of $75 per ton, which then gives the project a 5 year simple payout or 20 percent (approximately) return on investment. Note that, if such increased production of CO2 becomes commonplace, the glut of CO2 in the market will depress CO2 prices. Thus, if merchant prices decrease to $20 per ton of CO2, then the Carbon Emissions Credit must increase to $55 per ton make up the difference. That’s a long way from 5 cents per tonne.
http://www.airproducts.com/PressRoom/CompanyNews/Archived/2010/16Jun2010.htm

It is not actually the price for a tonne of carbon but the price for a tonne of CO2. Nevertheless, even though you get a substantial amount of oxygen thrown in with the carbon you buy with a tonne of CO2 for a nickel (or perhaps soon for nothing), it is still worth nothing.
If Al Gore’s put his money where his mouth is, a good portion of his $200 million in assets is tied up in CO2 credits. That would make the value of his assets fall faster than the temperatures in the Arctic possibly could.

The article leaves the impression that the CCX is closed tomorrow (Sept. 1st) through the labor Day three-day weekend. That’s not the case. They will be open through Friday the 3rd.

It’s wildly overpriced at a nickel. As others have pointed out, what does one get for their purchase? Nothing. They’re selling…not even air. I could see if this were a futures market where they were taking bets that carbon would some day be rationed, but today it isn’t, so they’re selling…what?

Good times.

I wanna buy 16 tons. Where can I send my 80 cents? The document would make a nice wallpaper or souvenir.

Isn’t Al Gore heavily invested in that exchange?

Meanwhile in NZ the government designated value per tonne is NZD25…
Thanks, green party.

Can anybody say ”flat-lined” ??…
If only we could have gone big-time short during the ”good times”. . . .

Let’s see them try to hide that decline.

Dear Congressman Waxman, if I go out and buy a million tons on the CCX can I have a lifetime exemption from all carbon fuel taxes, maybe even a subsidy?
Maybe that way I could afford a Gulfstream…

Now that’s a real death spiral!
-Scott

A century ago, when we still had a semi-free market economy, CCX would have closed shop, dried up, and blown away.
Today, they’ll probably hold out in hopes of some bail-out monies to tide them over till cap-and-trade passes.

If it drops another ten cents to -.05, then I’ll buy all they’ve got! They’d have to send me a nickle with every share, so I’d pocket the money and, as a bonus, have fuel for my fireplace this winter! 😛

The Crash Heard ‘Round the World.
By the way, the spot price for Central Appalachia 12,500 Btu, 1.2 SO2 coal this week was $69.50 per ton. Compare that 5 cents per ton for fiat “market” carbon futures.
How do you ridicule the profoundly ridiculous? And when you consider that the Founders of CCX are now managing the Nation’s economy, it is difficult to be amused.

Like I said when this exchange started, don’t be to surprised if the politico’s don’t do something about this as it’s a way of taxing people breathing, it’d be legendary in the political world, taxing air simply brilliant in there private bars.
And someone commented around here that the enviro’s where like a water melon, green on the outside, red in the middle, i’d like to thank you for that as i’ve had some of my more intelligent friends rolling around on the floor with that.

The formula: create an investment vehicle, hype the new commodity, buy low, watch share prices rise, sell high. The result is money, lots of it. In some cases it’s been about driving up the share prices of companies Gore’s group has already invested in. The fact that the original shareholders of the CCX have already bailed out with their sale to Intercontinental Exchange Inc. for a modest $600 million earlier this year only reinforces the reality that its creators have already lost faith in their elaborate invention. Likewise, the self-styled leaders of the climate change crusade Maurice Strong and Al Gore have already cashed in carbon fortunes already, whilst other active politicians like US President Barrack Obama, and United Nations IPCC Chief Rajendra K. Pachauri are engaged in similar play with their own financial interests in the “carbon” markets.
Like all government rigged quasi-commercial schemes, the only real beneficiaries are the initial shareholders- a special inner circle who are naturally ahead of the curve knowing about legislation and policy before it comes into existence. They are sometimes called “the great and the good,” “the in-crowd,” or “the smartest men in the room” (again, see Enron). Of these, almost all have jumped ship out of the market while their preferred shares- or in the case of the larger energy and manufacturing monopolies, their gratis “Carbon Allowances” given to them free by their governments- are still worth something. If you’re on the inside, it’s simple- get in early, make a ton of money then get out.
The CCX is flat-lining (though, like Frankenstein’s monster, it awaits re-animation as it’s still not actually dead yet) because the market anticipates Obama losing control of Congress in a few weeks. So “Cap and Tax” is impossible to pass, and Obama has already stated that the remainder of his term will be spent implementing current legislation rather than drafting new laws.

So, for $50.00 I can live pretty much guilt free forever….
How cool is that?
Aren’t markets great?

Dave Dardinger says:
August 31, 2010 at 8:54 pm
For BillyV & Kim
You buy sixteen tons
of carbon dioxide gas
and what do you get?

“Another day older and deeper in debt;
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go—
I owe my soul to the company store”
—Tennessee Ernie Ford (“Sixteen Tons,” written by Merle Travis in 1948, though there is a claim by one George S. Davis that he wrote an earlier version back in the ’30s; see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons )
/Mr Lynn

Even at $0.00 per ton, I wouldn’t “buy” it. You can’t trade without an account. An account costs $250 to set up. Each side of the trade (either buying or selling) has a fee of $5 per 100 metric tons. So at a minimum, it will cost you $255 to get into this market, even if the price is zero.
Frankly, I’m amazed that the price went to $0.05. If you had previously purchased 100 tons (the minimum size of a contract), why would you sell them for $5, which is sucked up by the $5 fee? It’s not worth the effort. I guess I am making a big assumption that the people who are investing in this, know what they are doing.

I smell a profit. If NZ says that a tonne is worth NZ 0.25, in theory I could buy at a nickel in Chicago, sell in NZ at NZ0.25 and make a turn of three cents US on a tonne. The snag is that one has to doubt that there are any buyers in NZ, and if there were Al Gore would have flooded the market before you or I could get near.

If the administration acts to be as politically non-pragmatic as in the past, then the $0.05 price may make some insiders very rich. That is to say, the EPA may impose regulations that will cause the short-term speculation of the value to skyrocket. Yes, this would be political suicide; but then also consistent with other decisions from the administration.

pat says:
August 31, 2010 at 7:34 pm
wish some sceptics would picket the CCX!
anthony, u may be interested in this win for aussie farmer, Peter Spencer….
___________________________________________
Those of us in the USA should be interested too, because of the “international harmonization of laws” The FDA has plainly stated its position. ”Failure to reach a consistent, harmonized set of laws, regulations and standards within the freetrade agreements and the World Trade Organization Agreements [WTO] can result in considerable economic repercussions.” Alternate reference
So our future can be seen in Australia as Congress tries to pass one of the recent “food Safety bills”
Huff and Puff tries to “set the record straight” but misses the boat because they ignore the clause “in any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction SHALL BE PRESUMED TO EXIST.” Huffy forgot to read up on the Commerce Clause.
Here is an accurate dissection of HR875. I am using HR875 because the first bill is what is actually wanted. A “compromise bill” is then passed and later phrases, such as the Commerce Clause are add to other bills as one line amendments to bring the compromise bill back to the original form.
Remember “….Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore let slip what many have long believed was his real intention as regards to U.S. agriculture.” Upon hearing that the FFA member wanted to continue on in production agriculture, Gore reportedly replied that the young person should develop other plans because our production agriculture is being shifted out of the U.S. to the Third World.”
Under Ag Sec. Veneman, in September, 1995, the USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service presented a 600-page document, Farm-To-Table, intended to control every step in the food chain from production to home preparation. This was written right after the ratification of the WTO and the Agreement on Agriculture.
During the same time period, under President Clinton, we also got the 25×25 resolution:
” By 2025, America’s farms, forests and ranches will provide 25 percent of the total energy consumed in the United States, while continuing to produce safe, abundant, and affordable food, feed and fiber.”
The Resolution was passed both in the House and in the Senate
Obama of course is fully supportive
It doesn’t help that all that grain diverted to biofuel uses MORE fossil fuel, not less
Al Gore has been very consistent in his push for the destruction of the USA. Here is another Al Gore goody.
Al Gore was the head of the Regional Commissions, where activists replaced elected officials. Stakeholder councils consist of representatives of special-interest, non-government organizations, and employees of local, state, and federal government agencies. Ordinary taxpayers are systematically discouraged from participating in these groups. The groups dictate public policy. Local elected officials can either accept the projects, or be ridiculed for rejecting federal money.
Regional Governance
This ties a lot of the various agendas together: http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/government/united_nations/news.php?q=1259955479

Kate says:
September 1, 2010 at 12:46 am
The formula: create an investment vehicle, hype the new commodity, buy low, watch share prices rise, sell high. The result is money, lots of it. In some cases it’s been about driving up the share prices of companies Gore’s group has already invested in…..
________________________________________________
Yes it is instructive to read about Al Gore and Maurice Strong’s last little con job – Molten Metal Inc.
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/04/us/panel-to-quiz-clinton-s-96-campaign-chief-on-stock-gift.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
Lawsuit http://securities.stanford.edu/1008/AxlervMoltenMeta/001.html
House Committee Investigation http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20040830154236-07181.pdf
Gore Aide Faces Donation Probe http://articles.latimes.com/1997/nov/06/news/mn-50871
Maurice Strong has also been caught up in a series of U.N. scandals and conflicts of interest not to mentions several insider trading scams such as the AZL Resources Lawsuit, and the food for oil scandal.
http://www.iowatch.org/ds_mstrong.pdf
http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/784/784.F2d.29.85-1454.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/rosett/rosett200601102128.asp
“It is therefore not surprising that another hat that Maurice Strong has worn is that of Treasurer, now Fellow, of Lindesfarne, New York, whose founder, William Thompson, conceived it as a medieval village into which the remnants of humanity might be herded as a feudalist “concentration camp,” once genocidal eco-facist policies of the sort advocated by Maurice Strong had taken hold. And, for good measure, Strong is the president of the World Economic Forum, the Davos, Switzerland annual summit of the world’s private bankers’.”
This article appears in the January 29, 1999 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Maurice Strong Discusses His Pal
Al Gore’s Dark Age `Cloak of Green’
by Scott Thompson
These founders of CXX are the heroes of the CAGW activists and they have the nerve to sling mud at Anthony????

It’s not easy being green.

Looks like the true market value is being approached. The invisible hand has spoken!

In the world of commodity trading, for every loser there is a winner.
So, the question is: where did all the CCX money go? My guesses include Maurice Strong, Franklin “Fannie Mae mortgages are riskless” Raines, Al Gore and his Generation Investment Management, Obama and the Joyce Foundation, Goldman Sachs (they always have their finger in some pie), and of course George Soros.
And who were all the losers? Everyone who believed in this Green Nonsense.

Why pay money for something that you can get for nothing? Go here for free carbon credits: http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com/home.do;jsessionid=B81464289E92AE3020F7A2381C052780

Once again the true believers get stripped of their wealth. Sure sign AWG was a cult.

CCX just deals in “feel good” carbon offsets anyway, with the hope that they’ll be worth something towards real offsets when there is an official US carbon market. Thus they were a speculative gamble from the start by design. Lottery tickets would have been better investments.
The “vintage” part comes from these offsets expiring over time. Use it or lose it, and no hoarding. Who wants to buy an asset that is scheduled to lose all its value at a certain date, with the only way to make money from it is to sell it to someone else for a profit while CCX is still selling lots of brand new ones?
As I understand it, for your purchase the CCX will see to it a suitable project will be offsetting the carbon that will be released. Where on this planet will you find a carbon sequestering project that can be done for 5 cents a ton? That wouldn’t cover the administrative cost of glancing at a single email. Good thing this isn’t a real carbon offsetting scheme, since it seems highly likely at those prices they have run up enough “carbon offset debt” to force a real bankruptcy after a real audit by real financial regulators.

This is the result when you try to force a market based on a manufactured political fraud. It ain’t gonna work.