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Utilities, not consumers, will benefit from free 2013 - 2029 allowances, "exclusively" for ratepayers purportedly. But instead of remitting directly to them, the Senate bill lets state utility commissions decide. They, in turn, can be more or less consumer friendly, but as their past history shows, ratepayers will end up losers.
As for Wall Street, the Senate bill is marginally less accommodative than the House version, but not enough to matter. For example, a new Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Office of Carbon Market Oversight is created, letting the corporate-run agency regulate spot and futures emission markets.
It would require emissions traders to register, be approved, and have their transactions cleared through a CFTC-run Carbon Clearing Organization. It'll work the same way the Federal Reserve regulates banks - by letting the giants that own it make the rules.
Further, carbon trading lets Wall Street "control our climate future" by "mak(ing) the housing and derivatives bubbles look like target practice," as Catherine Austin Fitts explained.
If cap and trade is enacted, polluters will win. Consumers will lose, and Wall Street will get the mother of all speculative bonanzas. No wonder, they and the energy giants are lobbying ferociously for passage.
Connection to the Gulf Disaster
On May 9, Attorney General Eric Holder told ABC's This Week that he sent Justice Department officials to the Gulf to determine if any "misfeasance (or) malfeasance" occurred.
Is the Senate climate bill perhaps connected to the Gulf spill? - being used as a pretext to propose "protections," including a provision saying:
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