If I came up to you and offered you a chance to buy some air, you would look at me as if I was a couple of fries short of a Happy Meal.   Well, that is exactly the con job that has been going on in front of America’s eyes and it involves people in the highest positions of power in our country.  Hold on to something while I give you the details.

It all began with the Joyce Foundation.  This foundation started as the financial back-up plan of a widow whose family had made millions in the lumber industry.

After her death, it was run by philanthropic people who increasingly dedicated their giving to Liberal causes, including gun control, environmentalism and school changes.  It has grown over the years until it is now bigger than the TIDES Foundation and actually funds it.

The Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the capitol outlay to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it trades is, believe it or not, air.

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is proud to let everyone know that it is “North America’s only cap-and-trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide.” Barack Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002 . What a coincidence, that, as president, pushing cap-and-trade is one of his highest priorities, huh?

Currently, CCX members are legally bound together by a  voluntary agreement to regulate greenhouse gases.

The CCX provides the vehicle by which to trade the very pollution permits and carbon offsets that would be  imposed by government mandate through the administration’s cap-and-trade proposals .

Climate trading could be a $10 trillion dollar market if cap-and-trade measures like Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer are signed into law.  These measures will make energy prices go through the roof, even as companies buy and sell permits for permission to emit those six “greenhouse” gases (like paying for forgiveness of your sins).

Founders of the CCX include former Vice-President of the United States Al Gore.  Gore is co-founder of Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offsets of no value whatsoever.  These offsets allow rich polluters to continue to pollute with a clear conscience (go and sin no more, wink, wink).  Other founders include former Goldman Sachs partner David Blood, as well as Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris, also of Goldman Sachs.

In 2006, CCX received a big boost when another investor bought a 10% stake on the prospect of untold riches. That investor was (ta daaah) Goldman Sachs, currently in the spotlight for selling financial instruments it knew never had the chance of a snowball in July of succeeding.

The actual mechanism that enabled trading on the exchange was bought and patented by none other than Franklin Raines, who was CEO of Fannie Mae at the time.

Raines struck it rich to the tune of some $90 million by buying and bundling bad mortgages that led to the horrible economy that we are still dealing with.  Why would a mortgage guy be interested in Climate Change?  Simple.   Cap-and-trade will make housing costs go up, too.

Goldman and Sachs, who gave around $1,000,000 to Obama’s Presidential Campaign, is under investigation by the SEC and in the midst of an inquisition by the U.S. Senate, as I alluded to previously.  Why are they putting up with this abuse when the Democrats themselves are the ones who have benefited the most from the political benevolence  of Wall Street in the past?

Answer:  money and power.  Goldman Sachs is going along with this dog and pony show because of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  If Cap and Trade is passed, they and the rest of the investors that comprise the Chicago Climate Exchange are going to be swimming in a moat of money.

All of the above prompts me to ask the following question:

Excuse me, Mr. President, sir.  Isn’t your push for cap and trade a conflict of interest?

Sources:  investors.com, foxnews.com, chicagoclimatex.com