Carney's Green bank alliance collapses after Trump ends support!
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode of the podcast, we discuss the collapse of the Green Banking Alliance, and what it means for the future of the green energy sector in Canada. We also discuss what it says about Mark Carney's business background, and why he should be worried about public finance.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. We have a funny story to go over today that I think gives a lot
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of insight into Mark Carney's business record over time, as well as how his liberal government
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is probably going to perform like over the next couple of years. Mark Carney has been a long-time
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proponent of an energy transition, wanting to move away from oil and gas and towards things like
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solar and wind. He supports subsidizing EV plants, battery factories, all that sort of thing. He was
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pushing it when he was Justin Trudeau's economic advisor, and I don't think he's going to stop now
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that he is prime minister himself. But this is a story that came out of the CBC yesterday that I
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honestly didn't see a lot of people cover. The headline here reads, Green Banking Alliance Carney
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helped create pauses activities, holds vote on his future. Now, when they say he helped create it,
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it very much was that he was like the quarterback to this entire idea. And as the subhead indicates,
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several members, including Canada's major banks, left group after Trump's re-election. Now, what does
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that tell you about the Green Banking Alliance that President Donald Trump being re-elected in the U.S.
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would cause it to effectively collapse because he doesn't want to subsidize green energy and EVs
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anymore? It should tell you that this entire thing is kind of scammy. The idea is that the
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only way this whole Green Banking Alliance works is not if the members just really believe in it and
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want to back, you know, green projects and whatnot, and it's good for the environment. So let's do it.
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The only reason they were doing it was because it was profitable because governments like the United
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States back when Joe Biden was the president were dumping money into these initiatives. So they can be
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grossly inefficient. But if there's money pouring in, there's a lot of money to be made.
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And the fact that this was considered a great idea of Mark Carney, and now we've just seen it
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collapse, is really telling about his business history. Brookfield Asset Management is heavily
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invested into EV plants, into battery plants, into green energy. The thing is that all of this is run
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off of green subsidies. It's not because these are great growing industries. Whenever people talk about
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how the industry is growing, just look at the subsidy chart that comes along with it.
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Oh, wow, green energy is really going up. And then you look at the subsidy chart on how much money the
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government is giving to green energy projects, and it will be skyrocketing too. It's no coincidence.
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It's a very scammy industry that only exists off of taxpayer money for the most part. Obviously,
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some people want solar panels on their houses. Obviously, in some areas, maybe a wind farm makes
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sense, but not in the proportions that we've been seeing it. But let's read a little bit of this
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article. And then I want to cut over to the interview attached to the CBC article where Rosemary Barton
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four years ago had Carney on to talk about this. It says,
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An international green banking alliance that Prime Minister Mark Carney helped establish
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is now suspending its activities and holding a vote to determine its future.
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The Net Zero Banking Alliance, NZBA, is the industry-led banking element of the Glasgow Financial
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Alliance for Net Zero that was created when Carney was the UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and
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Finance. The NZBA is a global alliance of banks that has worked to help financial institutions make
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green investments that will help the transition to Net Zero society and mitigate the impacts of
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climate change. Obviously, there's no conflict of interest there, seeing as Mark Carney was the
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chair of Brookfield, and he was heavily investing them into green initiatives, and then he's getting
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every other bank on board to basically invest in the same ones. So much of his career is just
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networking. It's just networking and getting people to stick money in the same stupid thing that he's
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sticking money into. It's not because he's good at finding value. I think we've already seen that as
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Prime Minister. A $92 billion deficit, no real substantial tax cut, and no ability to actually
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pay down the debt in the future should tell you about his business acumen. When you're the government,
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you can't rely on the government coming to subsidize you because you are literally the government.
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You are now the entity that is taking it on the chin to subsidize all these stupid initiatives,
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and now he's going to either have to desist from his green energy transition beliefs and actually
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take public finance seriously, or he's going to keep going down this road and we're going to keep
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racking up debt for no real economic benefits. I know he says he wants to build ports and pipelines
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and whatnot, but still, as many people are pointing out, other than announcing that he's creating a
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body that may announce something someday, he hasn't done anything. And yeah, he's only been Prime Minister
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for over 160 days. But at some point, you think early on, he would have announced that he was in
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favor of a certain project. Well, let's keep going down this article, then we will get to the interview.
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It says, while it started with just 43 member banks in 2021, it rose to have as many as 120 before the
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re-election of President Donald Trump saw the US abandon many of its climate initiatives.
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Canada's five largest banks all dropped out of the alliance in January. In a statement,
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NZBA said it will hold a vote on its remaining members on a proposed transition from a membership
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based alliance to a, quote, a new framework initiative, unquote. The result of the vote will
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not be shared publicly until the end of September. Now, the hilarious thing is I read down and heard
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what the new sort of format of the group will be. Basically, they're saying, okay, the group's
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dissolved. And how about we all just do our own thing? And we just say that we've basically evolved
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past the need for this group. They didn't evolve past it. The group died because the US is no longer
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subsidizing inefficient energy projects. It's no longer subsidizing the purchase of EVs. It's no longer
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subsidizing battery plants. Now, I don't like government subsidies. But I will admit at times,
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you may need to subsidize something, something that is critical for a nation's survival,
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if you ever lose a trade route. You know, like, I actually don't mind Joe Biden's Chips Act in the
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United States, how they're going to subsidize the creation of very complex microchips within the US,
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so that if the flow of microchips from Taiwan ever gets cut off, the US does have its own homegrown
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supply. That's fine. So, you know, to be fair to Joe Biden, that was actually a good policy on his part,
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didn't have very many good ones. But you know, that makes sense. The green subsidies are not
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safeguarding us. We have oil and gas products in this country, and we're working very hard to keep
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them in the ground. That's a problem. And everything Mark Carney has been indicating since
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he started running for prime minister, and he became prime minister, has said that the green energy
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subsidies are going to stay, even though that is a massive area of cost savings that we could just
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cut down in order to actually get our public financing back in line. But now let's drop down
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here and get to this interview he had with Rosemary Barton. You know, general objectives to meet the
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Paris Accord or to have sustainability. But once you have a net zero objective in a country, it is a
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reasonable question to ask a bank or a business, well, what's your plan? What's your plan to get to net
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zero? And use that logic and that imperative to build up the necessity to have a plan to work
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together in order to support the type of investment that's needed to get to a sustainable economy that
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And he's talking about how we need to support the necessity in order to invest more in these like
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green initiatives and reduce emissions. It's like, no, that's called like coercion. Him saying that
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we need to get governments on board to basically make this a requirement so that people will do it.
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If you need to make it a requirement, it means that it's a bad plan. You shouldn't have to require
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people to do something that's supposedly such a great thing.
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You've touted the alliance as representing 130 trillion US dollars, but obviously those are assets.
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Not all of that money is being used to fight climate change. How do you, how much do you expect of
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that money that will be actually gearing towards green investments? Is it over a long period of
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time? Will they have to quantify that at some point?
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Well, they'll have to quantify it. They'll have to quantify it on an annual basis. So they'll have to
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account every year for how much of their money is being invested in a, or being lent in the case of a
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bank, consistent with the transition to net zero and consistent with the transition to one and a half
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degrees. So the strictest objective that we have, you know, the nature of investment, the nature of
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lending is that it turns over. And as money becomes available, it gets reinvested. Of course, that can
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happen quite quickly in equity markets. It happens more slowly. When you have outstanding loans, people
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have to pay them back and then you decide where to put the money. But to put this in context, again,
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the estimates of how much it's going to cost the world to get from where we are today, which is a
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bad place, to where we want to get to tomorrow, which is a net zero, one and a half degree economy,
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those estimates are about a hundred trillion dollars. So we have the assets, we have the
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commitments. And what you're listening to here is effectively a green zealot. The idea that we are
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going to have to worldwide try and incentivize the pouring out of $100 trillion in order to meet this
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goal by investing in inefficient energy is insane. And the idea that this guy was touted as a great
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businessman because Brookfield Asset Management did well was stupid. Brookfield Asset Management
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is not a good company. It doesn't make a lot of money. Sure. But it very much has cornered the market
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on subsidy industry. Anything that is subsidized, Brookfield will try and get involved in. And you
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could say any financial institution, any investment firm would love to be invested in something where
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the government basically guarantees success by pouring in money. But when that is almost his
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entire record is messing up as the governor of the Bank of England, doing a good job as the
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governor of Bank of Canada because he was listening to what Flaherty and Stephen Harper were telling him
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to do. And then when he went off on his own with Brookfield, the only reason he had success was
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because the government was guaranteeing it. And now as he's prime minister and he's flopping all
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over the place, you have people being like, oh, I thought he would, you know, I thought, like,
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why is he messing up on the trade deal? Why can't he get a budget out? It's because he's not that
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competent. He needs training wheels from the government in order to make any of his plans
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come to fruition. And now that he is in the seat of the government, he can't rely on another government
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doing the work for him. He has to do it himself. But anyways, that was just a short video. I just
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wanted to go over this story that not a lot of other people had covered. Hopefully you'll like
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this little insight into a Kearney initiative that went south. But if just, you know, wrapping up here,
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just wanted to mention if you like the videos, make sure to give a like on this video,
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