Juggling Dynamite

I have never been a credit union member, but I recently saw a billboard outside a local Meridian that was advertising below-market mortgage rates along with above-market dividend yields, with the clear implication that one could borrow to ‘invest’ for the spread. Intrigued, I went in to ask about their offering, and was surprised (silly of me) to meet a ‘financial adviser’ who was happy to tell me about the credit union’s promotional rates and ‘end to end offering of wealth management manglement products‘.  Apparently, being a credit union, rather than a bank, is no assurance of impartial advice or duty of care to the clients.

It reminded me that the financial sales culture has been so enabled and grotesquely profitable for its perpetrators this past decade, their focus on scale and insatiable growth have become taught and emulated far and wide.  I was therefore not surprised this morning to read CBC’s latest report in its ongoing expose of the finance sector in Canada.  See:  Credit union employees say high-pressure sales tactics turn ‘members’ into ‘marks’.

“Unexpected benefits” of nature. Funny…

Don’t call them hikers; they’re “forest bathers”—people who swear by the therapeutic effects of trees. The movement is gaining popularity from Japan to Hollywood, and includes fans such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Justin Bieber. Here is a direct video link.

While offshore wind farms are already common in Europe, the Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island, is the first ever built in the US. This week officials switched on a connection between the island and Rhode Island’s main power grid, and shut down the now antiquated, diesel plant that had burned some 1 million gallons of fuel annually as the island’s previous power source.  See America’s first offshore wind farm, just shut down a diesel plant:

“The emissions that go along with nearly a million gallons of diesel a year — that’s all going to go away,” said Jeff Wright, chief executive of the Block Island Power Co.

The offshore wind power potential in the US is huge. If fully developed, offshore turbines could supply four times today’s total US electricity generating capacity — enough to power roughly 800 million homes.

“Having an operating project demonstrates to the rest of the industry, including the supply chain, that a project can be built, and the same to state governments whose political and financial support for these early projects will be critical,” said Jeremy Firestone, director of the Center for Carbon-Free Power Integration at the University of Delaware.

In recent months, developers have won leases from the federal government to build other offshore wind farms along the Atlantic Coast. Projects likely to be completed in the next several years include wind farms off the coasts of Long Island, Maryland, and Delaware, Firestone said.

PBS reported on the project last December.  Here is a direct video link.  Note:  when critics complain about the look or cost of turbines, they overlook the full cost accounting of fossil fuel excavation, transportation, burning, spills, maintenance, water waste, contamination, pollution, health costs, disease, wildlife devastation, climate change and clean up costs.  Fossil fuel and service companies have not set aside nearly enough funds for the restoration and repair work needed in the decades ahead.  For more perspective on just some of the costs that lie ahead for we, taxpayers, in the aftermath of the oil era, see:  A Sobering Look at the Future of Oil.