L J Furman's blog

Interviewed in prison, Bernie Madoff asserted that banks and hedge funds were “complicit” in his elaborate fraud. Diana Henriques, writing in the NY Times, 2/15/11, (here) said ”Madoff described as ‘willful blindness’ their failure to examine discrepancies between his regulatory filings and other information,” Quoting Madoff, “They had to know. But the attitude was sort of, ‘If you’re doing something wrong, we don’t want to know.’ ”...

The handling of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is a textbook study of how not to manage a crisis. The government seems to have ceded responsibility to BP, which seems to have acted to protect the Macondo oil field rather than the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf Coast.
 
It seems clear that neither BP nor the government were prepared for an event like this. At a minimum, both BP and the government should have had an understanding of the potentially catastrophic ramifications of an accident and, more importantly, an ability to shut off the flow of oil – to minimize the damage - as is the case with rigs operating in the waters of the North Sea.

BP's initial public statements were clearly inaccurate. On May 14, 2010, while BP was emphasizing 5,000 barrels per day reaching the surface, NPR reported scientific analysis suggesting 70,000 barrels per day was gushing from the well. On June 15, 2010, the U. S. Government revised its estimate to 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day. We now know that crude oil gushing from a broken well on the sea floor is like an iceberg - most is below the surface. BP and the government should have been accurate, open, and forthcoming in their statements.

BP answers to stockholders and to the governments of the jurisdictions in which it operates. The U. S. government's regulatory regime should have been stricter and more comprehensive. While BP might not be expected to go beyond what is mandated by law, it can neither be expected to regulate itself nor act in the interest of anyone but shareholders.

Where do we go from here?

NY. Jan. 25. Mark Fulton, "Climate Change Strategist" Deutsche Bank Asset Management, spoke at Cary Krosinsky's class in Sustainable Investing at the CERC, the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation, Earth Institute, Columbia University.

Krosinsky, Vice President of Trucost, recently co-edited and wrote the book Sustainable Investing: The Art of Long Term Performance with Nick Robins of HSBC. He is an Advisory Board member of the Association of Climate Change Officers (ACCO) and founder director of InvestorWatch. Trucost has built and maintains the world's largest database of carbon emissions and other environmental impacts as generated by the world's largest public and private companies. Their data and expertise is used by leading global fund managers and asset owners to manage carbon risk.

Krosinsky described Climate Change and Global Warming in terms of Pascal's Wager. "We can neither prove nor disprove that God exists. However, if we act as if God exists we will be better off.” So it is with climate change. The science is complex. But we will be better off if we redesign our energy and industrial infrastructures, reduce the level of greenhouse gases, and build a sustainable infrastructure.

Rather than subsidizing coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power, we need to tax carbon. And use the money to build solar arrays, wind turbines, and other new things.

"When you listen to the State of the Union," Fulton said, "don't expect anything on cap and trade, but expect to hear about green jobs."

"Every time there's a crisis," he added, "we rediscover John Maynard Keynes and the government stimulates the economy."