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”
Higher energy costs for a carbon tax to spend on scams that do not significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and increase the cost of energy.
It appears the President is hoping to achieve double digit unemployment. Doubling the price of energy will send the last manufacturing jobs overseas. High cost of energy will mean less money for Americans to spend in America. (Same comment of course applies to EU, Australia, and so on.)
Nope, won’t happen. This is a classic case of our bizarre Mutual Delusion Society. Rs always think a D president is going to run wild in his second term and declare himself Dictator For Life. Ds always think a R president is going to run wild in his second term and declare himself Dictator For Life.
Completely outside of reality. Never happens.
What does happen: Presidents slack off in their second term. They feel like the hard work is done, and now it’s time to enjoy the perks of office.
Guess we will have to just get over it. Obama won and he will rail against the Republican Congress (and many Dems) who will resist the imposition of that tax. However, if that IPCC report scares enough nitwits out there, with the media’s help, the Senate and Congress will go along. Sigh.
So, on top of all the tax increases from the fiscal cliff and Obamacare, we’re proposing adding a carbon tax, too? Why does he stop there? Let’s just announce that all paychecks will now be passed through the IRS who will then send you back your monthly EBT which will be strictly rationed.
To those piously stating that this additional carbon tax would “reduce the deficit”, I have just two words to say:
DREAM ON!
Congress has proven again and again that they can’t be trusted with money. A couple of economists
did a study, in 2009, which showed that for the entire period, 1945-2009, every dollar of Federal tax increase resulted in $1.17 of additional spending.
Think about that. For sixty-five years, through Congresses & Presidents of both parties, every time a
tax increase went through, it resulted in 117% more spending.
And for those who claim that a Republican House will not buckle on this: it doesn’t matter. Obama has already indicated (see this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/us/politics/shift-on-executive-powers-let-obama-bypass-congress.html?pagewanted=all) a willingness to use Executive Orders to bypass Congress in the face of what he calls Congressional obstructionism.
Yeah. That, and Obamacare, are really going to get the economy going again. Can’t wait to see what happens.
We will see tax increases, thanks to the inability to impose IQ tests for voter eligibility determinations. I prefer they do not call it a carbon tax, as that would legitimize it in the minds of some of the wackos.
Proof, if any, that voting has become a non-democratic farce, an exercise in nothing more than choosing which big brother poster goes on the wall.
The real decisions have long since been made, far away from the man on the street, by white collar criminals heading up banks & financial institutions.
So, who is doing the “considering” here? Is it Barack Obama, or is it HSBC?
I read the post as saying that HSBC is considering or perhaps suggesting that Obama should levy a carbon tax.
Since I’m feeling a bit lazy today, may I impose on you nice folks to answer my original question? Thanks.
I’m really confused. I’ve read the article a couple of times now, and I don’t understand what other people have been reading. This is an article that states that a LONDON-based analyst from HSBC appears to be speculating on what a carbon tax would do if it were introduced in the USA.
Why do so many people think that this foreign analyst has an inside track on what the Obama Administration is planning on doing?
A carbon tax is certainly a possibility, but, as many people have already pointed out, it’s not a probability because the GOP has retained control of the House.
As an aside (because it’s actually irrelevant to this discussion since a carbon tax is unlikely to make an appearance in America), the carbon tax in Australia appears to have had minimal impact on the economy of that country so far, despite the doom predictions that preceded it. Of course, it’ll also have minimal impact on CO2 levels, but we all knew that before it was introduced.
Nick says, Get your family, get your money, get out! to where no one knows. But there are no western country’s to run to.
Look north, Canada, stable, did not get hit near as hard by the down turn. check it out.
http://www.theodora.com/wfbcurrent/canada/canada_economy.html
http://moneymorning.com/2010/09/10/investing-in-canada-2/
Why do you think “HSBC Holdings” has a clue what Obama plans to do? This is pure speculation. It is also ridiculous. The president doesn’t have the power to tax. The problem of dealing with the deficit is one that the legislature must solve.
The House is Republican dominated and the Senate is completely fillibusterable. No tax can be imposed if Republicans block it. Republicans have absolutely no idea how to deal with the debt. You have no idea how unhappy that makes me.
The sad thing is few people know that China’s infrastructure spending has exhausted it’s temporary stimulus effect, the projects are rife with corruption and cronyism and the high-speed rail is plagued with safety issues. Can you say Potemkin Village?
China is a big polluter and their emissions are higher than the USA’s. They are now the #1 carbon emitter (not carbon polluter — no such thing exists). Their new coal plants emit far more than ours.
We do need more energy generation capability. We need more coal, more natural gas and more nuclear. We need to quit the word games of claiming every government expense is an investment, discard Keynesian, neo-Fascist and neo-Marxist economics and get the free market economy rolling again. Stop the central planning lunacy, acknowledge “shovel ready” is a lie in our current regulatory environment and encourage private investment in energy.
BTW: The public sector does have a role in transportation, however, that’s one if it’s actual responsibilities. We don’t need high-speed rail that takes people to places they don’t want to go. Do the central planners know where we will want to go decades from now? What will they do when traffic patterns and travel patterns change?
Reduce the deficit by destroying the economy and reducing the ability to raise taxes in the first place. Brilliant.
BTW: Who is HSBC?
This is their website: http://www.hsbc.com/1/2/
How much did they invest in Obama’s reelection? How many campaign bundlers on their board?
And in a related story— today, in a breakthrough procedure, a badly injured man received a blood transfusion from his own leg.
Terror is the last remaining weapon in their arsenal. Reason and Science have fallen from their grasp. It is the costs of Going Green which really scares the wits out of everyone nowadays.
Sen. Kerry has already sneaked Cap and Trade into the Law of the Sea Treaty that only needs to be passed by the Senate.
We’re screwed one way or the other.
How can this carbon tax halve the deficit? Obama doubled it by trillions in his first 4 years and HSBC has now confirmed, without wanting to say it, that Obama has no way out of trouble and increasing the 16 trillion to 24 trillion by 2016. HSBC says that this carbon tax will raise a bit more than 100 billion by 2021. But we are talking of a current deficit of 16 trillion which is increasing at a rate of 2 trillion EVERY YEAR,
This means one thing: Either it is an excuse to deliberately raise the price of energy (which will make industry fly to China more and more), or its the proverbial God making one go mad before he is completely destroyed, or both.
Can’t HSBC do math?
The carbon tax is working wonderfully over here in Oz ….industry costs are rising, jobs are being lost, welfare needs are increasing, consumer spending is down………the govt has more money to send shoring up its electorate, income redistribution is full steam ahead ….it’s all go, go, go down here!
HSBC were caught laundering drug money world wide. google it, or better still:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/05/us-hsbc-earnings-idUSBRE8A400920121105
and says:
(Reuters) – A U.S. fine for violating federal anti-money laundering laws could cost HSBC Holdings significantly more than $1.5 billion and is likely to lead to criminal charges as well, Europe’s biggest bank said on Monday.
HSBC said the U.S. investigation had damaged the bank’s reputation and forced it to set aside a further $800 million to cover a potential fine for breaches in anti-money laundering controls in Mexico and other violations. The provision was on top of $700 million it put aside in July
Obama does not owe anything politicallty to the climate change community now.
In fact, Climate Change is a dead-end issue for any politician for the time-being.
Obama could barely say the words in the election in case it cost him 0.5 percentage points in the vote, let alone make any commitments to it. (The climate changers voted for him but they were not voting for Romney anyway so he did not get one single more vote than he would have otherwise by being a potential, though silient, climate change supporter).
So, Obama does not have to do anything for climate change unless he personally wants to do something.
The Republican Congress will never pass such a bill. The only way Obama can regulate CO2 is through the EPA.
Juraj V. says:
November 7, 2012 at 8:56 am
“First, you bribe voters with public money. Then, you bankrupt the country. Then, you increase taxes for working class to pay the debt, so you can continue to bribe voters by other people’s money.
Sounds like positive feedback.”
And here I thought that it was a forcing.
That will disproprtionally hit the poor – will be passed through on ALL things…thanks!