British Business Leaders Fiddle as Green Economy Collapses
Adair Turner (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In a week when official watchdogs recommend tighter controls to help avert further UK banking fraud a key spokesman for the nation’s “renewables” sector goes the other way demanding regulations cuts. Isn’t that a green light to more corporate fraud?
Adair Turner, Head of the UK’s Financial Services Authority, (FSA) last week (September 28, 2012) called for tougher laws and more regulation to prevent a repeat of the 2008 banking crash. The government’s Business Secretary,Vince Cable concurs. But John Cridland, Head of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), disagrees. He is on the campaign trail pleading for deregulation for Big Green to salvage what analysts admit is a dying EU sector. In this article we examine just how off-beam the CBI has become on this controversial issue.
This Autumn CBI head honcho John Cridland is on the party political conference circuit desperately banging the drum for Big Green with his vision of a new deregulated “intellectual infrastructure.” Since July Cridland has been touting the CBI’s new Colour of Growth report as “the best solution for a greener economy.” In his latest speech to the Liberal Democrat conference Cridland pleads a special case for the UK’s green sector; he’s cock-sure they can be trusted not to defraud the system as did their banker cousins in the City of London and Wall Street.
But we must remember that Cridland’s CBI has long been regarded as the smarter-suited twin brother of the Labour Party. Known for endlessly chasing cushy government contracts the CBI is once again seeking tax “benefits” and jobs for the boys. At it’s core Cridland’s mission is to get Prime Minister Cameron’s government to permit fewer, not more banking regulations. Cridland’s justification: “The so-called “choice” between going green or going for growth is a false one.” But the CBI frontman is already conceding that for his vision to succeed, “bills will go up, but that’s how investment works.”
Cridland’s hope is that Britain’s Coalition government will provide the new Green Investment Bank (GIB) exemptions from the FSA’s proposal for increased accountability. Since 2010 GIB has been designated by government to be the banking mechanism by which it intends to drive down “carbon emissions” by 2050. But events in the wider world economy seem to be rendering GIB a lame duck destined to never get off the ground.
Anyone astutely following recent history will know that green investors are no less criminally corrupt. The global carbon trading market in Europe has collapsed due to widespread fraud costing taxpayers billions; while the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) was closed in November 2010 after similar irregularities. European Commission spokeswoman Maria Kokkonen admits that half of all EU nations are vulnerable to this kind of white-collar crime.
Only a fool or a charlatan refuses to see that another economy-wrecking bankster-style Ponzi scheme is right here in Cridland’s making. Britons know all about the grotesque price already inflicted on them for bailing out corrupt big banks. Will they welcome Cridland’s latest flight into financial folly? The wider UK economy already bears a massive green burden thanks to the ludicrous Climate Change Act (2008). Because of the Act the profligate “green economy” already sucks £18 billion a year off the teat of taxpayers.
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