In a recent press briefing given by him and his colleagues, the Deputy MD of the mission-starved IMF was positively drooling over the prospect that the next round of Climate-camouflaged tax transfers from the pockets of the developed world's citizens will trigger a veritable host of 'adjustment' problems and hence offer this institutional dinosaur a whole new rationale for ill-judged economic meddling. In the Q&A which followed, one member of the audience wondered:-
You spoke about a lot of countries earning carbon credits and actually making some money out of the fact that they have tropical forests from these carbon funds. Most of these are emerging markets, you've got Indonesia and Africa as well. What would you suggest that they would do with the money that they earned from those carbon funds? I mean should it be perhaps something like what oil rich countries have been doing is actually saving the money, the funds for the future. What would you say that they should be doing with that money?
The answer could not have been more clear cut: under the guise of 'saving the planet', Western expropriation is going to be carried out on such a scale as to swamp many such recipient countries - many of them barely functioning kleptocracies - with yet more boodles of unearned cash. Or, rather, as the IMF respondents put it:-
MR. KEEN: I think perhaps I would just say, you are right, we are talking about developing and emerging markets. But we are also talking about the developed countries as well, where proper carbon pricing schemes, whether in the form of taxation or in the form of tradable permits for which a price was charged, would have revenue implications.
MR. COLLYNS: From a macroeconomic perspective, the potential flows from payments for carbon credits could have macroeconomic implications. That is one of the things we're going to be looking at in our chapter in our World Economic Outlook. The balance of payments implications, the exchange rate implications. One thing to be cautious about is that these revenues are well used, well directed into efficient local spending. But indeed, it's quite possible that the best use for some of these funds will be to save them to avoid a "Dutch disease" type of problem. If you ramp up spending too quickly, it could lead to a loss of competitiveness in other parts of the economy which could have negative long term implications. So I think it is important to look at the temporal aspects of these issues when choosing how to use these funds
Don't say you haven't been warned: the Fabian Salemites are coming to a chimneyplace near you!
