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Cap and Trade manipulation leads to WCI Inc.

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Cap and Trade is com­ing — good and hard. So far, numer­ous pleas to Gov. Jer­ry Brown, Cal­i­for­nia Air Resources Direc­tor Mary Nichols and the Cal­i­for­nia Leg­is­la­ture to delay the start of the first Cap and Trade car­bon cred­it auc­tion have fall­en on deaf ears.  Fol­low­ing a dry-run test of the pro­gram in August, CARB is poised to launch the auc­tion on Novem­ber 14, 2012.

Cal­i­for­nia will become the sec­ond largest car­bon trad­ing mar­ket in the world, just behind the Euro­pean Union, whose Cap and Trade pro­gram began in 2005.  Although there is much to be learned from the EU exper­i­ment, those in charge of California’s agen­da can­not be both­ered with such non­sense.  After all, this is not just Amer­i­ca, but Cal­i­for­nia.  Any Amer­i­can knows that, “As goes Cal­i­for­nia, so goes the nation.”

In Brown’s bud­get for fis­cal year 2012–13, which began on July 1, there is a line item for the upcom­ing auc­tion list­ing income of $1 bil­lion. Being a rather com­plex oper­a­tion, the auc­tion requires expert and dili­gent over­sight to avoid any­one “gam­ing” the sys­tem.  Not only will the state’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pate, but com­mod­i­ty spec­u­la­tors will be anx­ious­ly join­ing in the trad­ing as well.  So who, exact­ly, will over­see this com­pli­cat­ed auc­tion that is now three weeks away?  West­ern Cli­mate Ini­tia­tive Inc.

On Novem­ber 28, 2011, WCI was estab­lished as a not-for-prof­it cor­po­ra­tion in the state of Delaware, as Katy Grimes was the first to report here on CalWatchDog.com.

James Gold­stene, the CEO of CARB, is also list­ed as the Chair­man of the Board of WCI Inc.   In oth­er words, the head of the auc­tion over­sight group is also the CEO of the orga­ni­za­tion he is over­see­ing.  Accord­ing to a doc­u­ment filed with the Cal­i­for­nia Sec­re­tary of State’s office on Decem­ber 23, 2011, WCI’s prin­ci­pal place of busi­ness is list­ed as 2 Wall Street, New York City, N.Y.

Con­tin­ue arti­cle here:  http://calwatchdog.com/2012/10/23/cap-and-trade-manipulation-leads-to-wci-inc/