#TopTen | No. 4: Greenpeace & the Greens have a problem with the truth

 

Last year at EnZed’s fourth-most read political blog this was the fourth most popular post asking … if the Greens & Greenpeace have truth on their side, why do they need to lie so much?

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If you have the facts on your side, there’s no need to lie. So when you discover activists who regularly make things up out of whole cloth, you have to ask why.

Take Greenpeace and their campaign against Golden Rice, a technology promising to liberate millions from disease. From publishing staged photos and video to faking studies, distributing false and misleading statements and destroying crops, this is the crowd who say we should follow “settled science” when it suits them; and when it doesn’t – as in this campaign – they resort instead to vandalism and lies. In the words of the American Council on Science and Health their campaign against Golden Rise is “made up of Internet hackers and eco-terrorists using fear-mongering to get uneducated people to do their dirty work for them.” Nobel Laureate Sir Richard Roberts simply calls their campaign of lies a “crime against humanity.” 

Let’s explain what they’re up to.

If you are not familiar with it, Golden Rice is the name of a product created when scientists added three genes for producing beta carotene, a Vitamin A precursor, to the 30,000 already in rice. Obviously this is a good thing in countries where Vitamin A deficiency is common.
    Regardless, organisations like Greenpeace and Union of Concerned Scientists have labelled it “Frankenfood.” In the time these groups have helped block its approval, nearly 20 million children have died and another 20 million have suffered preventable blindness…

“That’s blood on the hands of Greenpeace and the organisations they mobilise for support” says Hank Campbell at the American Council for Science & Health – and also on the hands of the Green Party, from whence NZ’s current Greenpeace director famously comes.

Greenpeace [continues Campbell] has variously alleged that the levels of beta-carotene in Golden Rice are too low to be effective or so high that they would be toxic. But feeding trials have shown the rice to be highly effective in preventing vitamin A deficiency, and toxicity is virtually impossible. (There’s an internal feedback loop in humans that stops beta-carotene from being converted to vitamin A if levels become too high.)

All trials show the rice to be both effective and safe. So with no science to support its antagonism to genetic-engineered food,

the organisation has been forced to adopt a new strategy: try to scare off the developing nations that are considering adoption of the lifesaving products. Greenpeace has gone so far as to concoct tales of genetically-engineered crops causing homosexuality, impotence and baldness, and of increasing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

There is nothing behind Greenpeace’s fantastic allegations but bluster. Never has been. Yet in press release after petition after protest they have continued  to spout these lies that have helped block approval of this life-saving food. They trade not in science but in fearmongering and innuendo.

Every trick in the Greenpeace playbook has been pulled out to publicise the lies and help bury the science, all of it lapped up by a compliant media, leading 100 frustrated Nobel Laureates this week to “sign an open letter asking Greenpeace and others who have been blocking progress and access to beneficial plant biotechnology products, like Golden Rice, to abandon their campaigns against genetic engineering in agriculture.”

In a letter unveiled at a press conference on June 30, more than 100 Nobel Laureates from diverse disciplines voiced their support for genetic engineering in agriculture and called on NGOs, the United Nations and governments around the world to join them. The Laureates–in fields including Medicine, Economics, Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Peace–all signed an open letter asking Greenpeace and others who have been blocking progress and access to beneficial plant biotechnology products, like Golden Rice, to abandon their campaigns against genetic engineering in agriculture…
    The website accompanying the release documents the global scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs (recently reaffirmed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, and virtually every other authoritative scientific body on the planet). It also documents the abundant and widespread environmental and economic benefits confirmed by the experience of more than 18 million farmers around the world, the vast majority of them small farmers in developing countries.

Greenpeace International's response? They refuse to budge.

And the local rabble, led by former Green Party leader Russel ‘Rustle’ Norman? “The Herald says that “Greenpeace New Zealand could not be reached for comment.”

Someone at the Green Party leadership however could be reached, if not any sign of human intelligence – Greens’ co-leader James Shaw proudly affirming that rather than resile from it the hypocrisy would instead be continued.

Shaw [telling Newstalk ZB] that’s not going to change anything here.

Science being irrelevant to Shaw and his colleagues (not one of whom can even boast an undergraduate science degree).

But on this basis you do have to wonder what would make them change their minds about anything? If not science, then what? As commentator Henry Miller concludes:

It is unclear why Greenpeace—which has also raised money and its profile by bragging about sabotaging efforts to test insect-resistant crops that need less chemical pesticide—persists in some of its mendacious, anti-social campaigns. What is clear is that none is likely to be more harmful to the world’s children than its assault on Golden Rice.
    The real threat to life and limb is not genetic engineering. It’s the organised-crime organisation called Greenpeace.

And the Green Party.

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Tomorrow, I post last year’s third-most popular post here at EnZed’s fourth-most read political blog asking … for all his tremendous popularity, is John Key a unique example of a Prime Minister without a legacy?

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Greenpeace has a problem with the truth

 

If you have the facts on your side, there’s no need to lie. And if you don’t … why, then, if you’re Greenpeace, you just make it up. In the words of the American Council on Science and Health  “made up of Internet hackers and eco-terrorists using fear-mongering to get uneducated people to do their dirty work for them.” And their succesful opposition to Golden Rice in particular, a technology promising to liberate millions from disease, they are involved in what Nobel Laureate Sir Richard Roberts calls a “crime against humanity.”

From publishing staged photos and video to faking studies, distributing false and misleading statements and destroying crops, this is the crowd who say we should follow “settled science” when it suits them, and when it doesn’t resorts to vandalism and lies.

If you are not familiar with it, Golden Rice is the name of a product created when scientists added three genes for producing beta carotene, a Vitamin A precursor, to the 30,000 already in rice. Obviously this is a good thing in countries where Vitamin A deficiency is common. Regardless, organisations like Greenpeace and Union of Concerned Scientists have labelled it “Frankenfood.” In the time these groups have helped block its approval, nearly 20 million children have died and another 20 million have suffered preventable blindness…

“That’s blood on the hands of Greenpeace and the organisations they mobilise for support” – including the Green Party, from whence NZ’s current Greenpeace director comes.

Greenpeace has variously alleged that the levels of beta-carotene in Golden Rice are too low to be effective or so high that they would be toxic. But feeding trials have shown the rice to be highly effective in preventing vitamin A deficiency, and toxicity is virtually impossible. (There’s an internal feedback loop in humans that stops beta-carotene from being converted to vitamin A if levels become too high.)

Yet there is nothing behind their allegations. Never has been. They trade not in science but in fearmongering and innuendo.

So with no science to support its antagonism to genetic-engineered food,

the organisation has been forced to adopt a new strategy: try to scare off the developing nations that are considering adoption of the lifesaving products. Greenpeace has gone so far as to concoct tales of genetically-engineered crops causing homosexuality, impotence and baldness, and of increasing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Every trick in its playbook has been pulled out, leading 100 Nobel Laureates this week to “sign an open letter asking Greenpeace and others who have been blocking progress and access to beneficial plant biotechnology products, like Golden Rice, to abandon their campaigns against genetic engineering in agriculture.”

In a letter unveiled at a press conference on June 30, more than 100 Nobel Laureates from diverse disciplines voiced their support for genetic engineering in agriculture and called on NGOs, the United Nations and governments around the world to join them. The Laureates–in fields including Medicine, Economics, Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Peace–all signed an open letter asking Greenpeace and others who have been blocking progress and access to beneficial plant biotechnology products, like Golden Rice, to abandon their campaigns against genetic engineering in agriculture…
    The website accompanying the release documents the global scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs (recently reaffirmed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, and virtually every other authoritative scientific body on the planet). It also documents the abundant and widespread environmental and economic benefitsconfirmed by the experience of more than 18 million farmers around the world, the vast majority of them small farmers in developing countries.

Greenpeace Inernational’s response? They refuse to budge. And the local rabble, led by former Green Party leader Russel ‘Rustle’ Norman? “The Herald says that “Greenpeace New Zealand could not be reached for comment.”

The Green Party itself however could be reached, co-leader James Shaw proudly affirming the hypocrisy would continue.

Green co-leader James Shaw said that’s not going to change anything here.

Science being irrelevant to Shaw and his colleagues, why the hell would it. But you do have to wonder what would make them change their minds about anything?If not science, then what? As commentator Henry Miller concludes:

It is unclear why Greenpeace—which has also raised money and its profile by bragging about sabotaging efforts to test insect-resistant crops that need less chemical pesticide—persists in some of its mendacious, anti-social campaigns. What is clear is that none is likely to be more harmful to the world’s children than its assault on Golden Rice.
    The real threat to life and limb is not genetic engineering. It’s the organised-crime organization called Greenpeace.

And the Green Party.

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Greens, and the vision thing: A call for NZ liberty lovers

In which Suzuki Samurai calls local liberty lovers to arms. Are you with him!?

With Russel Norman's now-imminent departure from the Green leadership, Peter Cresswell suggested some of what is admirable about the Ginger Whinger and his Green party.

It’s true that many folk fail to see the attraction. Parents, and the older 'sensible' population at large (dreary, dull, cynical), are aghast at 17-25 year olds’ tendency to vote Green. Most I guess would put this it down to naivety, to youthful exuberance, and/or to rebellion or educational indoctrination – ''they'll grow out of it'' they say, or hope, or pray.

Of course, this last must be the case as the Green Party have really gone nowhere electorally from what appears to be a top line of around 15% and holding. This after years of campaigning seems to demonstrate that indeed youth do grow up and come to the very real conclusion that the Greens' future is not one that many of them would survive.

But why is it that youth are ever captivated at all by these cloth heads?

Whatever happened to peak oil?

Now that the Ginger Whinger is retiring, can we please permanently put to bed some of his failed and more fanciful memes? Like peak oil?

[Hat tip Powerline]

Opposition leader stepping down

The two speeches on the state of our non-union were not real news, but this is:

I disagree with virtually every word Russel Norman has ever said, but he has been the single most effective opposition leader ever since he became one. And I have said that before. Like many others, I take him seriously because, despite his frequent insanity – his loony economics, bankrupt proposals, amusing election bribes, misanthropic policy positions and utter lies-- when he does get it right he’s good; he’s very good indeed. As he has been on the rise of the #SurveillanceState: the only politician attacking the issue to retain both his principles and his dignity.

His resignation is a big hole both for the opposition, and for the Greens – who in their sexist way are obliged to select another male as their co-leader. To see for yourself how big the hole, try naming the next male on the Green Party’s list without resorting to Google…

This is not satire

No, honest, this really and truly is true. See, no joke, from the Herald:

$9 million of your money to develop a game development fund. To give to game developers.

Plus another $3 million over three years for something called a “government chief technology advisor.”

If this were truly satire, I’d be stuck coming up with a worthwhile punchline…

Smart green failure

I know nobody’s talking about them, but Russel Norman is still talking about “a smart, green economy” as if that were an actual thing.

The Green Party's plan for an innovative economy includes … $1 billion of new government funding over three years for research and development to kick-start a transformational shift in how our economy creates wealth.

What sort of transformational shift? One less “reliant on exporting commodities like milk powder, which is rapidly destroying our rivers and lakes, and leaving our economy increasingly vulnerable to the
fortunes of one market — China,” and more like the “alternative, and that is the Smart Green Economy.”

We can continue down the path of National’s short sighted Pollution Economy or we can change course and embrace a Smart Green Economy. The choice is ours.

Nice, but what exactly is it?

Apparently it’s an economy in which the government sets up “an expert innovation working group … to decide on the best way to deliver this step-change in innovation funding.” This step change being $1 billion in grants, and even more in tax credits, to companies heading in directions favoured by the expert working group – sorry, the expert innovation working group – “a key criterion for assessing all future industry grants” being a “focus” on “sustainability.”

Future governments will have to accept the inevitable failure that comes with investing in innovation along with sharing in the brilliant successes.

And so will future taxpayers.

This model is not new. It was one of Obama’s flagship “stimulus” projects in recent years, with billions being poured into the smart, sustainable new economy. As it happens, yesterday was the third anniversary of stimulus" benefactor Solyndra officially declaring bankruptcy.

That was just one failure the American taxpayers had to accept. One among many, including:

Russel Norman lies

So, is there a difference between wilful misinterpretation and lying?

• Green party costings – Matt Nolan, TVHE
• Real decline? – Eric Crampton, OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR

The Greens Cutting Taxes?

Let’s start with the good news.

The good news about the Greens’ Carbon Tax Plan is what it takes away.  We would see the end of Nick Smith’s Appalling Emissions Trading Scam, income taxes removed on the first $200 of income, and (maybe) 1% removed from company tax.

Fair play to the Greens for that.

Now for the bad news.

Russel Norman had a bank, e-i-e-i-o [update 2]

Russel Norman had a bank, e-i-e-i-o
And in that bank he put our cash, e-i-e-i-o
He stuck in his thumb, and pulled out a turkey …

Apologies for the bastardised nursery rhyme, but it operates on the same sort of childish absurdity as Russel Norman’s inept idea of a “Green Investment Bank” that takes money from (profitable) miners and fossil fuel producers to gift to (unprofitable) “green energy” producers.

The idea of course is based – as all government “industry policies” do – on government picking winners who turn out to be losers.

Norman’s scheme suffers at root from the same problem as Labour’s Housing Policy: it relies for its ongoing sustainability on a programme making profits that it just can’t and doesn’t make.

Sorry Russel. you’re wrong.

Greens co-leader Russel Norman has made headlines for taking the opportunity for NZ parliamentarians to express sympathy with the 2,000 victims of the Philippines typhoon, and using it instead to tell the House it is another warning for the planet.

The typhoon, the strongest since 2006, was the result of climate change, he said, an urgent message to humankind that Mother Nature won’t continue tolerate  our wicked carbon-fuelled behaviour.

Norman quoted an understandably emotional Filipino “climate negotiator” who had said "What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness, the climate crisis is madness.”

We can understand the emotion. But the science simply does not support what they’re saying—nor their rush to blame.

There are two striking things about this nauseously speedy rush to blame every natural disaster on man’s thoughtlessness or wickedness.
    The first is how unscientific it is. As some scientists have pointed out, there is no “absolute certainty” that climate change causes things like Haiyan. Indeed, the latest IPCC report says: “Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century.” The ugly urge to say “that storm was caused by climate change”, even before serious studies have been carried out, even before the bodies have been counted, is fuelled by the weirdly self-flagellating moralism of the Green movement, by Greens’ never-flailing instinct to “prove” that modern life kills, rather than by any cool-headed assessment of the facts.
    And the second striking thing about the idea that these storms are speaking to us, that Mother Nature is sending an “urgent message to humankind” through all this wind and destruction, is how backward, unenlightened and pre-modern it is. It echoes ancient notions that natural phenomena were fundamentally punishments of mankind by gods annoyed by our behaviour. It is also reminiscent of the witch-hunting hysteria of Middle Ages Europe, where, likewise, human beings – in that case, “witches” – were held responsible for weird climatic events. Witches were burned on the basis that they caused long winters, weirdly hot summers, crop failures, and, in the very cold 1628, a “year without a summer”. As German historian Wolfgang Behringer points out in his book Witches and Witch-Hunts, in that bleak era, "large-scale persecutions [of witches] were clearly linked to years of extreme hardship and in particular the type of misery related to extreme climatic events". And so it is today. That old, dark idea about man being responsible for natural phenomena, either by stirring up Mother Nature’s wrath or through some other wicked behaviour on his part, is being rehabilitated in the pseudoscientific language of climate change.

Sure, the UN Climate chief himself  along with the head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change blame the Philippines devastation on climate change, arguing that tropical cyclones have increased in intensity and disasters like Haiyan are becoming more common—ignoring their own papers saying the opposite, and a historical record demonstrating that 33 of the 35 most devastating storms occurred with CO2 below current levels.

Indeed, and despite  Russel Norman’s claims,

 during the 20th century the number of tropical cyclones annually making landfall in the Philippines did not experience any net change. All variability was merely oscillatory activity around a mean trend of zero slope.'

Ironically, history’s two worst typhoons were both in the 1970s, when scientists feared global cooling.

Writing in the Telegraph, Brendan O’Neill argues that if there is any real lesson emanating from the typhoon’s destruction, it is that humankind in general needs more industry, not less.

 

Perhaps the most galling thing about the idea that the best way to deal with natural disasters like Typhoon Haiyan is to become more environmentalist, to get more serious about solving climate change, is that in fact what we need is the precise opposite of environmentalism – more industry, more economic growth, more development and more urbanisation in those parts of the world currently exposed to nature’s whims.
    The pieties of environmentalism, which emphasise the importance of “appropriate” or “slow” economic growth and living in harmony with nature, would leave the less well-off at the mercy of natural forces; it is only meaningful industrialisation, of the kind that we in Britain and other Western countries have benefited from, which can erect a barrier between nature and mankind. That is why storms, earthquakes and tusnamis always have a smaller impact on developed nations than they do on under-developed nations – because big, unapologetic, manmade progress helps to keep us safe from unpredictable nature. It’s not medieval Green moralism that the Third World poor need, but rather anti-Green daring and some serious investment in modernity.

[Hat tips and pics from Climate Depot, The Hockey Schtick, Real Science]

Russel Norman still wants you to be poorer

He said in June he’d backed down on his plan to print money, but Russel Norman is still a limbless man in a pile of paper dollars.  Only now he wants to cheapen your money not by printing millions of paper dollars, but by having them borrowed into existence at an ever greater rate by having the Reserve Bank Governor slash the “official” interest rate.

“By keeping the Official Cash Rate higher than it needed to be to manage actual inflation, the Reserve Bank Governor has kept the dollar higher hurting exporters and export-led growth,” the Ginger Whinger said this morning.  “The Bank had additional scope to cut the Official Cash Rate,” he said.  “The New Zealand dollar was overvalued and needed to come down,” he said…

What does that mean in plain English? It means he still wants to make the country richer by making you poorer. Somehow. That he still wants to make bankers richer by making your money less valuable. Any how. And above all he still wants to drive down the NZ dollar to make imports more expensive, which means (given that so much of what you and I buy both locally and imported is priced in terms of overseas buyers) he wants to see real wages drop.  By means, it seems, of of any artifice necessary.

This man still wants to be finance minister in the next Government.

Can some vigilant journalist please ask David Cunliffe, Shane Jones and Grant Robertson if they would rule that out. Pretty please?

#SurveillanceState: An opposition leader has emerged [corrected]

Why is Russel Norman considered by so many the de facto leader of the opposition—despite Labour leader David Shearer having that titular role? And why is Labour considering having Norman in a senior role in any coalition they lead—despite his party’s loony economics, bankrupt proposals and misanthropic policy positions?

Perhaps he’s taken seriously, despite his frequent insanity, because when he gets it right he’s good—he’s very good.  And on his opposition to having the GCSB listen in to all of us whenever they feel like; to the government taking journalist’s phone records whenever they want to; to the monitoring of journalists’ communications by the defence forces,  he’s been virtually alone in integrating all of the attacks on privacy and a free media—and being very articulate in doing it. Listen here here, for example [from 3:30 1:50], to his succinct response this morning to these issues.

And David Shearer has been virtually silent, except when pushed.

CORRECTED: Audio link fixed.

What do you call a limbless man in a pile of paper dollars

The Green’s Russel Norman has backed down on the plan he issued so loudly last year—loudly, frequently, and to everyone who would stand still to listen—to fix all the country’s ills by printing money.

His plan was killed not by his realisation that he was talking fruitcake economics, but because of a tidal wave of rational outrage at the Ginger Whinger’s insanity. Or in Greenspeak, “The feedback we’ve received on that element of our proposal made clear it did not have the broad support it would need to work.”

Crikey, even their potential coalition partners in the Labour Party were embarrassed by it. And given what emanates from their policy department, that takes a lot.

Just to remind you how his policy was intended to work, here’s John Clark and Brian Dawe to explain it.

I look forward now to him abandoning all the other loopy policies he’s espoused since taking over the co-leadership.  (Yeah, right.) 

In the meantime, here’s a joke:

Q: What do you call a limbless man in a pile of paper dollars?
A: Russel.

Goldilocks and the failed Ginga [updated]

All around the world failed banks have been bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of billions and billions (and billions)of dollars.

In New Zealand and Australia, mercifully so far in this ongoing crisis, this hasn’t happened.  (Not yet, but don’t bet against it.) Instead, Australasia’s trading banks are showing healthy profits—profits in line with the return on capital enjoyed by other Australasian businesses—profits earned on lending that has paid off, rather than failed.  Profits that have made savers and the banks’ shareholders richer.

Only to the likes of the Greens’s Russel Norman is this a problem, the Ginger Whinger sniffing at this small mercy: telling State Radio this morning that even in this time of global economic uncertainty banks should make neither big profits nor small profits, but profits that are only “average.”

This is the same man who recently declared he wanted to print enough money to make bankers richer and wage-earners poorer.

The man who wants the finance portfolio in the next government.

Here’s Tim Minchin.

UPDATE: Russel Norman says Australian banks excessive profits are “strip mining” New Zealand.  David Tripe (who heads Massey University's Centre for Banking Studies) says New Zealand banks make a PRE-tax return on total assets of just over 1%, and a post-tax return of 0.6% - which he describes as "certainly not outrageously high either historically or internationally.”

Not exactly “strip mining,” is it Russel.

Here’s the good news about Russel Norman’s money printing plan [updated]

First, here’s John Clark explaining Quantitative Easing:

And now, the really, really good news about Russel Norman’s plan to print money to bring down our exchange rate was the response. Yesterday we saw a tidal wave of rational outrage at the Ginger Whinger’s insanity. 

John Key told Breakfast TV, "If printing money made you rich, Zimbabwe would be the richest country on the planet, and it's not.” He said the money plan was ‘wacky’ and could create a financial crisis. And Steven Joyce called it “a sign of panic.”

Given the number of politicians and central bankers around the prepared to embrace the wacky, this response was very encouraging to hear.

As was the response from the commentariat, despite the regular trial balloons promoting the idea launched  by popular commentators Bernard Hickey and Rod Oram. Perhaps the intellectual acumen of our commentariat is more informed than we might think.

• Roger J. Kerr observed “the worry is that the Green Party’s economic policies generally resemble the Polish Shipyard model, which collapsed twenty years ago as it did not work.” Our currency is high because it is a commodity currency, good exporters have been hedging against the exchange rate, and in any case the dominant determinant of the NZ dollar currency value is what goes on in Australia. The immediate consequence of Russel’s money bomb, he says, would be lower real wages.
  Roger J Kerr explains why politicians should not be trusted with setting the NZ dollar currency value. – INTEREST.CO.NZ
• NZIER’s Shamubeel Eaqub observes, “Greens' quake bond buying policy is not QE; It's the sort of 'debt monetisation' practised by Mugabe; Will see poor pay for quake rebuild via inflation.”
  The Greens’ policy for the Reserve Bank to buy bonds issued by the government to pay for the Christchurch rebuild was not the same as those policies, Eaqub told interest.co.nz.
  “It’s essentially monetising debt. It’s not even quantitative easing,” he said.
  “The idea of the quantitative easing that is happening in the US and Europe in particular is that they are trying to provide liquidity to banks to promote credit growth in the economy, through the private sector,” he said.
  “What [the Greens] are proposing is for the government to essentially monetise its liabilities through higher inflation.
  “It’s just monetisation of government debt - essentially saying that the central bank will provide credit to the government,” he said.
  In the US, while the Federal Reserve was buying up government debt through Treasury bond purchases, it was not ‘monetising’ Treasuries by buying them directly from the government with the newly created money.
  “The government of the US is still liable for that debt. But here [with the Greens' policy], you’re just going to give that money away. The Treasury bills that the Fed is buying are from the banks, to give liquidity to the banks, so the banks can then lend that money onto the economy,” Eaqub said.
  “Here they are saying [the Reserve Bank] should be buying bonds from the government. Those are two very, very different things,” he said.
• "Putting money into the system would create a 'sugar rush' but it would quickly wear off.  When would they stop buying?" Mr McIntyre said no-one appeared to have thought of what happened to the extra money flooding around the system from governments buying up bonds when the financial crisis eased.
  Is printing more money the answer? – ODT

And on Twitter, Interest.Co.NZ’s Alex Tarrant posted:

BREAKING: Fuji Xerox approaches Green Party in early bid for printer procurement contract…

Most bloggers were horrified. Whale Oil posted this

David Farrar pulled out enough Zimbabwe currency to buy a small chocolate bar:

• “Russel Norman is completely misrepresenting QE by saying that the recent crisis is “evidence it isn’t inflationary”.  QE was put in place to fight the fact that policy was too tight overseas, and they were trying to fight deflation – in essence the fact that inflation stayed near the “target band” in these countries is evidence that QE is indeed inflationary as you would expect … just in the way they were intending.”
  No QE free lunch for NZ – Matt Nolan, TVHE
• “It's "only" going to be $2 billion that is quantitatively eased. And it's only to buy earthquake recovery bonds.
  Russel Norman must be daft if he expects us to swallow that. What he is proposing is simply the thin end of the wedge, and he will quickly find other justifications to print more and more money. And each time he does, inflation will rise, and life will get tougher for everyone, Green Party supporters included.”
  The thin end of the wedge – KEEPING STOCK
• “I thought this madness died with Social Credit, but Greens (and Labour may not be far behind) have said that they want the NZ Reserve Bank to effectively start printing money. They think that NZ printing more money is a good way to increase the relative value of the US dollar. We might as well start burning our savings.”
  Greens literally believe money does grow on trees – David Farrar, KIWIBLOG
• “Printing more money as Norman suggests , is one of the failed policies of the 70s and 80s that the late Sir Robert Muldoon might have favoured.”
  Green snake oil on sale – HOME PADDOCK
• You can rely on Russel Norman to engage in reality evasion, but his latest attempt to introduce monetary policy into the Green Party's repertoire is laughable… Russel Norman knows that the money you hold should be worth less…
  QE has been the Keynesian response in Japan, the US, the UK and the Eurozone.  The mass destruction of value due to these bubbles popping has been filled by massive money printing, yet it has not resulted in a sustained kickstart to demand… It wasn't undertaken to improve export competitiveness.  It has demonstrably failed to boost Japan's economy.  It has created minor blips in the US economy, and nothing more.
  For The Standard to say that having a consistently high dollar is about speculators making money from New Zealand is demonstrable ignorance.  To think that, say cutting the value of the NZ$ by 25%, is good for the working poor (when it will raise prices of petrol, electrical goods, overseas holidays and any imported books, clothes), is bizarre.”
  Russel Norman says "fuck the poor" with his economic illiteracy – LIBERTY SCOTT

Even comments at the Herald and Stuff and on the blogs have been good:

• "Norman has just added a new interpretation of "green" in politics. Previously it was just "green" as in environmental; now it's also "green" as in immature." – Terry
• “More lunatic stuff from the Greens god forbid they ever get into power - the country will be sunk.” – Buster
• “I liken this to a declaration of 'let them eat cake' indicating a profound gap in understanding economics.” – Demos
• “Terrible idea. The impact against the US dollar may work out well for exporters, but think about how we will compare to the Australian dollar. More of our talent will move across the ditch for substantially higher wages.” – John
• “To them money is free, it grows on trees and you just get the next generation to pay for current consumption.” – Prezzie
• “Just when you think you can trust the Greens, they go and say something so stupid as to guarantee they will never be in charge. Printing more money is something a child would come up with.” – FMax
• “What is quantitative easing?
  Short answer: It's an unconventional monetary tool used by central banks to stimulate the economy.
  America has been doing this since 2008. It has worked so well for them(sarcasm), that they decided to do it again and are actually deciding at the moment if they need to do it again.
  So by all means Green party, drag us down like the states, we just love to see all our hard earned cash get devalued and disappear while cost of living goes up even more.” – JW
• “Question for Dr Norman. How much money would have to be created to reduce the overseas exchange rate by the 10 to 15 cents needed to make our exports to anywhere but Australia ( which is our main market and which takes 60% of our exports now at a reasonable exchange rate) competitive.” – Rosy Fenwicke
• “Why are those other countries in that position. Because they printed funny money. Doubling nothing still equals nothing and it is like putting your head in the sand and pretending that the problem will go away.” – Robert Moody
• “Playing the 'Zimbabwe' card now. You lose.” – Sylph Critical
• “Have you actually had a look at what currency dilution has acheived for the US or the UK?
  Quantitative easing has failed again: What madness has seized our leaders! To extend Russel's "currency war" analogy from the other week, there's no point in trying to shoot when you're caught in the crossfire as we are.” – James Stephenson

Russel Norman wants to make bankers richer, and wage-earners poorer [updated]

The world is full of monetary cranks.  Russel Norman is one of them.

If the Reserve Bank were to go out and print $2 billion of new money, as Russel Norman wants them to, are we all better off?

That is, two billion dollars of new paper money on the back of the current base of nearly four billion.

Imagine, as David Hume did years ago, that we all woke up in the morning to find an act of magic had somehow increased the quantity the number of notes and coins in our pockets, in our wage packets, in our piggy banks, and under the couch and chairs.  Everyone of us now goes about our business feeling richer. And so does everybody else—and we all of us would know it.

But have we all become richer? Has anyone? Because as even a moron would know (from which classification Norman is clearly excluded) since we all have the same increase and everyone knows about it—including salesmen—in this fantastical scenario all that increased money is just going to increase all our prices. And nothing will have changed fundamentally*.

And no-one will be better off.

This magic injection of new money [explains Detlev Schlicter in his book Paper Money Collapse] has no impact on the production of goods and services, on resource allocation, or on income distribution…

But that is only true in this magical, unrealistic situation.

Because of course, money never comes into existence in this way.

In reality, it’s very different. In our modern floating-currency paper-money economies, money is borrowed into existence on the back of “securities” like government bonds and assets like the contents of the housing bubble.  Which means when new money comes into existence, the first users of those dollars are borrowers and governments.  So what happens to prices? Well, they still go up, but since  these folk get first use they get to spend the new money before prices rise.

But can you see who misses out? Can you see who’s paying for these new riches?  No new paper notes have been put into your pocket, or into your savings accounts. The pool of real savings has not increased one iota. And no new resources have been brought into existence by the creation of this counterfeit capital.  Which means the new assets now enjoyed by borrowers and the resources distributed on the back of government bonds are simply transferred from savers and non-borrowers to governments and other big borrowers.

Oh, and also transferred to the pockets of those bankers who clip the ticket all along the way.

This is what Russel Norman wants more of.

This is what Russel Norman dreams about today.

Issuing $2 billion of “Earthquake Bonds” to be bought with printed money which will then bid up the prices of building materials and supplies, raid the pool of real savings, and make instantly poorer every wage-earner and every holder of existing dollars (which is almost all of us), making it instantly more impossible for anyone struggling to afford our already unaffordable houses (which is many of us), and transferring to Christchurch resources created by savers and non-borrowers—by means of what can only be called a stealth tax. 

At least his idea of an Earthquake Levy was up front—and would not have helped to wreck the whole price and structure and make you and I and every wage earner so much poorer (and every banker involved so much richer).

Oh, but he says this will help bring the exchange rate down! Which as I pointed out last week, will simply make fuel food and imports more expensive and all wage earners even poorer!

But, says Norman: “They’re doing it everywhere else.”

Yes, and everywhere they’re doing it, it isn’t working.  It was used by Japan for the last two decades—the two decades they call Lost. It was used by Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe. I trust even Russel knows what happened there.

Oh yes, and it’s been used over the last six years in the US, UK and Europe to produce figures showing economic growth when there’s been none.  I trust you’ve noticed with what (lack of) success. And you should perhaps have noticed it has reached a dead end.

It is not a crime not to know anything about economics. But it is to talk as if you do.

Frankly, this is the sort of fantastical pie-in-the-sky kind of monetary quackery that used to be the province of Social Credit.

Perhaps Russel should go out today and join them.

* * * * 

* Except of course for the overnight damage to the price structure and the longer run damage to the structure of bond prices and interest rates. But that’s a longer story not fully relevant to this one.

UPDATE: Liberty Scott: “It is a fundamental attack on the poor, and on those with savings on average incomes.”

Cunliffe recycles Norman

Martyn Bradbury has taken time out from his new career to talk up David Cunliffe’s weekend speech to a lingering band of those who can stomach his company. Say’s Bradbury to his own dwindling band of readers:

Cunliffe's third True Labour speech has gone far further than the Greens have in highlighting the looming environmental crises of living beyond our biosphere’s ability blah, blah, blah…

Actually, it does nothing of the sort. In fact, it reads like nothing so much as Russel Norman’s own conference speech from a couple of weeks ago—in short: what about the dolphins; we’re all going to die; population growth is a curse; capitalism is to blame; government must pick winners; “green technology” is the way of thee future etc.., et., etc.

So rather than fisking Cunliffe’s doppelganger of a speech, another pig-ignorant cry for attention--another example of recycling masquerading as original thinking—let me just direct you to my reviews of Norman’s original.

• Re-designing Russel's green economics
• Don’t sell the power companies—throw money my way instead
• Minds beat stomachs

Don’t sell the power companies—throw money my way instead [updated]

"Selling our power companies is the worst way to go,” says Green co-leader Russel Norman. “ They should instead be supercharged,” says Norman, “so they can develop clean, green energy technology we could sell around the world."

Really?

Dr Norman says “"smart, green economics" is the way to go because the international market for sustainable products and clean energy technology is growing rapidly.”

Really? Is that right?

Well, no.  It’s not. Like virtually everything else the Ginger Whinger says, it’s not right. Not right at all. The international market for “clean energy” is bankrupt.  Not just struggling. Not just a little bit bankrupt. It’s completely, wholly and abjectly bankrupt.

It’s bankrupt in Spain where 12 billion Euros were spent in 2009 alone, €571,138 creating each “green job,” and with each “green” megawatt installed destroying 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the Spanish economy.

It’s bankrupt in Germany, where even with subsidies 300% higher than conventional electricity generation consumers pay nearly ten percent more—and carbon abatement costs at $1,000 per ton for solar power are roughly fifty times the European price for carbon.

It’s bankrupt in the Netherlands, the home of the windmill, where after billions of euros of subsidies, most going outside the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte now recognises today’s “windmills turn on subsidies.”

It’s bankrupt in the United Kingdom, where it raises the cost to consumers by £1.1billion; where for every job created in the United Kingdom in “renewable energy” 3.7 jobs are lost; and in winter (when they’re needed most) Britain’s forest of wind turbines consumes more power than it produces.

So where is Norman getting his news from? Certainly not from Europe. And not from the States either, where despite the combination of Obama’s windy rhetoric and billions of dollars of subsidies “sustainable energy” is still not sustainable--where the White House sank half a billion taxpayer dollars into Solyndra, a company it knew was failing, and did--where the companies Ener1 and A123 Systems floundered after sucking another half-billion from taxpayers--which are dwarfed by the failure of company Solar Trust of America, which failure on its own leaves US taxpayers on the hook for a further $2.1billion!

And these are  just the headline failures. Sterling Burnett lists the whole sorry mess of America’s green energy’s bankrupt blackout, first, the bankruptcies:

• Beacon Power Corp: Received $43 million in federal loan guaranteed in 2009 and also received $29 million in PA grants – Bankrupt in October 2011
• Ener1 (parent company of EnerDel): Received $118.5 million in federal loan guarantees — Bankrupt in January 2012 – has since exited bankruptcy
• Evergreen Solar: Received $58 million in MA loan guarantees (an undisclosed portion sourced from federal ARRA block grant) — Bankrupt in August 2011 with $485.6 million in debt
• Solyndra:  Received $535 million in federal loan guarantees in 2009 and $25.1 million in CA tax credit — Bankrupt in August 2011
• SpectraWatt:  Received $500,000 in federal loan guarantees in 2009 — Bankrupt in August 2011
• Babcock and Brown: Received $178 million in federal grants in December 2009 (4 months after it went bust) – Bankrupt in early 2009
• Mountain Plaza Inc.: Received $424,000 in federal grants through TN Department of Transportation in 2009 — Bankrupt      in 2003 and again in June 2010
• Solar Trust of America (parent company: Solar Millennium from Germany): Received $2.1  billion loan guarantee in April 2011 – Bankrupt in April 2012

And the other subsidized “Green Energy” companies in decline:

• A123: Received $300 million in federal grants and $135 million in MI grants —Declining orders and have forced multiple layoffs
• Amonix, Inc.: Received $5.9 million in federal tax credits in 2009 through  ARRA —Laid off 2/3 of work force
• First Solar: Received $3 billion in federal loan guarantees — Biggest S&P loser in 2011, CEO fired
• Fisker Automotive: $529 million in federal loan guarantees — Multiple 2012 sales prediction downgrades for first car release, delivery and cash flow troubles;Assembling cars in Finland
• Johnson Controls: Received $299 million in federal grants in 2009 — Low demand caused cancellation of a new factory, operating at half capacity
• Nevada Geothermal: Received $98.5 million in federal loan guarantees in 2009 —Defaulting on long-term debt obligations, 85% drop in stock value
• Sun Power: Received $1.2 billion in federal loan guarantees — Debt exceeds assets; French oil company took over last fall
• Abound Solar: Received $400 million in federal loans in 2012 — ½ work force laid off
• BrightSource Energy: $1.6 billion federal loan approved in April 2012 – loan obtained through political connections with the administration; absent the loan, Brightsource’s solar power purchase would have fallen through.

That’s the record so far, and by year’s end once tax breaks on this madness lapse fully one-half of the industry’s jobs will be gone—gone because without the special favours these “green energy” “innovators” absorb more resources than they produce.

So that’s how well “green energy” is doing.  This really is “the worst way to go.”

“Sustainable energy” is not sustainable—not even with subsidies. “Renewable energy” is not renewable—not even by  leaving the taxpayer on the hook for billions.

So why does the media not challenge Russel Norman for continuing to pretend he owns the source to some economic magic bullet?

UPDATE: Liberty Scott makes an excellent point about the Ginger Whinger’s taxpayer-funded referendum:

If the parties that lost the last election can demand that the Government seek an additional electoral mandate to implement the policies National stood on in its 2011 manifesto, then surely the same applies in reverse.
Every time the state buys something with taxpayers' money, it should ask permission…

No power? How about no Greens.

What’s the definition of humbug? I’m not sure exactly, but it’s something involving Russel Bloody Norman and his Green Party. Who are on Red Radio this morning arguing that the country needs security of electricity supply!

Excuse me, this is Russel Bloody Norman from the Green Party arguing for security of electricity supply!?

It just makes your jaw drop.

This is the Green Party who partied when the coal-fired Meremere Power Station was mothballed and protested when it wanted to re-open transforming waste to power. Who celebrated when Marsden A closed and Marsden B was disallowed from opening—and whose protesting helped to make the closing necessary and the opening impossible.  Who cheered when power stations closed in New Plymouth, Palmerston North and Te Awamutu.  Who help to throttle every proposed expansion of every existing power plant, and who helped to kill new generation from Project Hayes, Project Aqua, Mokihinui Hydro, Tongariro Hydro and hydro using the Whanganui River, Wairau River, Matiri River, Makititaki River or the Arnold River;  any further hydro on the Clutha River; any possible gas or tidal generation around the Kaipara; and who even as we speak are helping to delay new generation projects at Dobson, Castle Hill, Hurunui, Matiri, Mill Creek, Mokau, North Bank, Puketoi, Rotoma, Stockton, and Wairau.

They’ve protested every coal-fired power-station that has been opened—and every gas-fired and oil-fired power station proposed—and they’ve resisted every coal mine, gas field and oil field being explored, coming on stream or being exploited. They’ve argued against every wind project—and helped to spearhead resistance. They’ve helped to stop every new hydro scheme proposed –and every oil or gas-fired plant dreamed up. They helped to promote the Kyoto Protocol and the related Emissions Trading Scam, which serve to strangle coal, oil and gas-fired power stations, and the Resource Management Act, which helps to kill off hydro, wind and thermal power stations.

If we have no power, and we’re perilously close to that unhappy state, then it is they and their fellow travellers will have played the largest part in making that happen.

And now they have the cheek, they have the effrontery , to complain that selling state-owned power generators is going to threaten the security of electricity supply!

I’m staggered.

The only thing worse than the absolute bloody hypocrisy is the abject bloody acquiescence of the journalists who didn’t bother to ask Russel Norman how he looks in the bleeding mirror in the morning without vomiting.