Be Afraid, Be Very Very Afraid

Something that it tossed off rather blithely in this article is the fact that under a tax and trade system^*, will generate a market of more than $2 trillion, "within five years of trading (starting)".

When you look at what trading has done to the price of oil, i.e. created increased transaction costs and increased price volatility, and you realize that the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is just $13 trillion a year, this looks like another Wall Street "Masters of the Universe" engineered disaster in the making.

I'm waiting for the CDS (Carbon Default Swap) market to blow up the markets, and I wonder how I hedge myself to profit from it when it happens.

^*That is what it really is, after all. It's taxes which are bought and sold to allow Goldman Sachs to generate fees for trading these permits. Cap and trade is used in order to make it sound like it isn't a tax, but it's a tax, only a lot of the proceeds go to Ivy League classmates of Ivy League politicians as sales commissions.