Save-planet George Soros invests in coal
by Jon Rappoport December 2, 2015:
Breitbart reporter Steve Milloy has the story (“The New King Coal: George Soros”, 8/17/2015): “I predicted…that the left wasn’t going to kill off the coal industry so much as it was going to steal it. That prediction is already becoming true courtesy of billionaire George Soros.”
“U.S. Securities and Exchange Act filings indicate that Soros has purchased an initial 1 million shares of Peabody Energy and 553,200 shares of Arch Coal, the two largest publicly traded U.S. coal companies. As pointed out last week, both companies have been driven perilously close to bankruptcy by the combination of President Obama’s ‘war on coal’ and inexpensive natural gas brought on by the hydrofracturing revolution.”
“Less than a year ago the Soros’ Climate Policy Initiative issued a major report concluding that the world could save $1.8 trillion over the next two decades by transitioning away from coal. The report referred to coal reserves as ‘stranded assets’ that were losing value as they were no longer needed…What a difference a few months makes, especially when those months have seen coal company stocks fall to fire sale prices…”
Instead of the ever-popular pump and dump strategy for making money, this is dump and then pump. Make coal look worthless, then buy it up. Then take the stock price up.
The Climate Change tap dance features all sorts of $ deals, and as yet the really huge ones are lurking behind the curtain. In the meantime, we can see a few of the out-front hustles.
There is the case of Tom Steyer, hedge-fund billionaire. Alatheia Larsen of newsbusters has that story (“Green Billionaire Tom Steyer, Squeezing Climate Panic for Profit”, 7/10/15):
“Tom Steyer’s concern for the environment and almost religious devotion to promoting green energy appear to be targeting another kind of green…Alternative Energy wasn’t always Steyer’s focus. He only began attacking coal power in 2011…Meanwhile in Australia, the hedge fund that Steyer started and ran until at least 2013, Farallon Capital Management, was busy finalizing a transaction to create what is on track to become one of Australia’s largest coal mining operations. This deal increased coal production in Australia by a staggering 70 million tons…Steyer divested from Farallon in 2014 after saying that he could not reconcile it with his current personal beliefs about climate change. Also, conveniently after he had made a fortune.”
Nice work if he could get it, and he could.
Several years ago, I wrote a piece about Al Gore’s good fortune as a climate-change god.
Here is an excerpt:
In 2001, Al Gore was worth less than $2 million. Now, in 2012, it’s estimated he’s locked up a nice neat $100 million.
How did he do it? Well, he invested in 14 green companies, who inhaled — via loans, grants and tax relief — somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.5 billion from the federal government to go greener.
Therefore, Gore’s investments paid off, because the government was providing massive cash backup to those companies. It’s nice to have federal friends in high places.
For example, Gore’s investment firm at one point held 4.2 million shares of an outfit called Iberdrola Renovables, which was building 20 wind farms across the United States.
Iberdrola was blessed with $1.5 billion from the federal government for the work which, by its own admission, saved its corporate financial bacon. Every little bit helps.
Then there was a company called Johnson Controls. It makes batteries, including those for electric cars. Gore’s investment company, Generation Investment Management (GIM) (twitter search), doubled its holdings in Johnson Controls in 2008, when shares cost as little $9 a share. GIM sold when shares cost $21 to $26 — before the market for electric-car batteries fell on its head.
For a while, the going was good. To make it go good, Johnson Controls had been bolstered by $299 million dropped at its doorstep by the Administration of President Barack Obama.
On the side, Gore has been giving speeches on the end of life as we know it on planet Earth, for as much as $175,000 a pop. (It isn’t really on the side. Gore is constantly on the move from conference to conference, spewing jet fumes in his wake.) Those lecture fees can add up.
—end excerpt—
The save-the-planet cash registers are ringing. And you can bet that the future configuration of cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and “reparations” paid out from developed to undeveloped countries will funnel endless cash into elite hands—while cutting energy production for the planet and putting more people into a state of poverty.
We’re just seeing the tip of the $ iceberg.
Finally, here is a quote from Princeton physicist, William Happer (Climate Depot, 1/22/15, mirrored here: “A Noted Physicist Speaks Out”):
“…the jihad against atmospheric carbon dioxide. Like its predecessors, this cause has generated plenty of sanctimonious slogans: ‘intergenerational justice’, ‘saving the planet’, ‘sustainability’, ‘negligible carbon footprints’. In reality, the cause has brought ugly, bird-killing windmills, which have replaced the psalmist’s ‘cattle on a thousand hills’; hapless native peoples have been expelled from their from ancestral lands, sometimes at gunpoint, so wealthy corporations and foundations could claim to be saving the planet, at no small profit to themselves; fraud in the trading of carbon credits has cheated honest taxpayers. But for this cause, as for most of its predecessors, the end justifies the means. Policies to ‘stop climate change’ are based on climate models that completely failed to predict the lack of warming for the past two decades. Observational data show clearly that the predictions of unacceptable warming by more carbon dioxide are wrong…policies designed to save the planet from more carbon dioxide are based on failed computer models.”
Profits for “the right people,” however, aren’t failing.
Source: Jon Rappoport's Blog
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