Mr. “Ecomagination” — GE’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt — called on the U.S. to put a long-term price on carbon so this country could compete with China in being “green, green, green, green – four greens,” according to a news article today in Bloomberg.
In his speech, the article notes, Immelt said that a carbon pricing scheme would create jobs:
The U.S. needs to establish a “long-term price signal” on carbon emissions, in order for companies to provide “appropriate funding for innovation” regardless of fuel, as well as revive nuclear energy. Such moves would create jobs rather than shift them overseas, Immelt said.
So taxing energy use — raising the price of energy — will be a job stimulator. Doesn’t sound like it, if he has in mind a cap-and-tax scheme. (Here’s also a useful primer on costs of global warming policies.)
Immelt seems to be emulating the fictional “thought bullet” leader Martin Lukes, who plunged to his death recently in the Financial Times. Lukes’ most notable contribution to corporate management was “creovation”-combining creativity and innovation, which, according to Lukes’ obituary (registration required) was the basis for GE’s “ecomagination” emphasis. (Satire, of course.)
According to some reports, Immelt may be a candidate to replace Larry Summers as chief economic advisor to President Obama (not a satire). If so, expect lots of “thought bullets” a la Lukes.
Your host Richard Morrison welcomes returning guest co-host Jeremy Lott of the Capital Research Center and technical producer Ryan Young as special guest commentator for Episode 62 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with the semi-proposed allegedly not-a-bailout of the newspaper industry, Steven Chu’s condescending views on energy policy and Google’s copyright troubles in France. We then look at the what soaking the rich has done to New York’s finances, Obama’s presence at the UN and a good old fashioned Washington, D.C. corruption scandal.
In today’s Financial Times, CEI Senior Fellow Gregory Conko responds to Clive Crook’s criticism of employer-sponsored health insurance. Read the original here or see below.
Nationalising healthcare flaws
Published: July 17 2009 03:00 | Last updated: July 17 2009 03:00
From Mr Gregory Conko.
Sir, It is ironic that Clive Crook condemns employer-sponsored health insurance for encouraging over-consumption of medical services while simultaneously touting publicly provided or publicly subsidised universal healthcare coverage (“Two cheers for US health reform”, July 13).
It is true that the “link between consumer and cost is broken” when healthcare services are subsidised by one’s co-workers and when insurance premiums are paid largely by one’s employer. But why does Mr Crook imagine that link will be repaired when costs are subsidised by taxpayers and insurance “premiums” paid largely by government?
Of course there are flaws with a tax code that subsidises the purchase of health insurance and, worse still, only that purchased by employers. Among these is the incentive for over-consumption of arguably unnecessary health services. But, nationalising these flaws of subsidisation will exacerbate that problem, not correct it.
Gregory Conko,
Senior Fellow,
Competitive Enterprise Institute,
Washington, DC, US
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
There is a great piece in Today’s Financial Times authored by Michael S. Kapinker, which is related to an issue raised in my post last week. It addresses the organic food issue, pointing out that, during a recession, it makes good sense to buy conventional. He notes, its probably a good idea at any time based on the science. It’s worth taking a look.
Photo: courtesy of Rick Audet.
In a running theme, I again cover the topic of the U.S. government’s heavy-handed dealings with swiss bank UBS. A nod to my colleague John Berlau, whose letter in today’s Financial Times gives a nod to former ambassador Faith Whittlesey and her commentary in FT expressing concern over the Obama administration demanding the names of 52,000 Americans who do business with UBS. As I stated in previous posts on this issue, these actions by federal authorities are setting a bad precedent for the privacy of American citizens. As usual, I am left at the end my post with questions: When the government can demand to know every detail of your financial life, what is there to stop it from exerting control over it?
As pundits bet that Sen. Hillary Clinton is a done deal for Secretary of State, today’s editorial in the Financial Times calls it a poor choice for a variety of reasons. In the piece extolling President-ele
ct Barack Obama’s picks for his economic team, the FT says that’s not the case for Hillary and hits her lack of experience, her ambitions, and her personality.
Economics aside, the biggest surprise among Mr Obama’s rumoured appointments is Hillary Clinton, whose selection as secretary of state is said to be “on track”. This is a far more questionable choice, since Mrs Clinton is so lacking in foreign policy experience. The appointment gives rise to unhelpful speculation about the new president’s motives. Is he attempting to bind his party’s wounds? His victory already did that, and governing well would assure a full recovery. Is he attempting to neutralise her as a rival for the presidency in 2012? If things go badly for him, it will take more than this to quell another Clinton bid.
Could Mrs Clinton subordinate herself to Mr Obama, and devote herself to making his presidency a success? That is doubtful and, with many far better qualified candidates available, is a risk there is no need to take.
CEI has criticized that choice for different reasons — Sen. Clinton, who has strong anti-trade, anti-globalization positions, would not temper the in-coming president’s lack of support for trade, which could cause not only more economic problems for the U.S. and the developing world but also geopolitical ones.
Assuming, as most nonpartisan observers do, that Sen. Obama is walking away with this election today, it might behoove Republicans and their supporters to ask why a seemingly close election in early September got away from them so badly. For one potential answer, I can do no better than point them to The Short View on Financial Times TV (general link here). In the episode for yesterday, November 3rd, John Authers points once again, as he has several times before, to the correlation between the turn in Sen. McCain’s fortunes and the collapse of Lehmann Bros. Frank Luntz is one of many to have suggested that the failure of the McCain campaign to react by opposing the Administration’s bailout package was decisive. As Frank says,
That decision alone would have made him a hero to tens of millions of hard-working middle-class voters who resent seeing their tax dollars handed over to fund the retirement packages of the Billionaire Boys Club. But he didn’t.
In short, it’s the economy, stupid. Surprisingly for a self-described maverick, it appears to have been Sen. McCain’s desire to cling to the self-serving nostrums of Wall Street and the Beltway that doomed him.
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