Juggling Dynamite

All the clean energy and electric vehicles in the world will be insufficient to combat climate change so long as animal consumption keeps soaring. That’s the conclusion of leading researchers at Oxford, who found earlier this year that emissions from food production will eat up a whopping 50 percent of our carbon budget in a few decades.  Thinking people who care about human sustainability are called on to evolve to smarter eating habits.

Some are leading the charge.  Patrick Brown, who rose to prominence as a geneticist at Stanford pioneering DNA technology that transformed genetic research is now a biochemist and founder of Impossible Foods which has engineered a veggie burger that bleeds and tastes like meat.   See: Why this bloody veggie burger may be the Tesla of foods.

Also listen to this enlightening podcast discussion with Brown, here is a direct audio link.

‘Patrick Brown on plant-meat that bleeds and the science of flavor’ by The Ezra Klein Show https://t.co/RqhT6AenC5

— Danielle Park (@kdaniellepark) September 29, 2016

Danielle was a guest today with Kerry Lutz on The Financial Survival Network talking about recent developments in the world economy and markets. You can listen to an audio clip of the segment here.

Further to the discussion, political distancing efforts re Deutsche Bank are in progress, see Political support for ‘dinosaur’ banks must end – Bundesbank’s Dombret:

Andreas Dombret, the Bundesbank board member in charge of supervision, said banks’ deficiencies should be tackled and the sector should be allowed to shrink further.

“Political support for the banking sector must finally come to an end – something that unfortunately I’ve only seen to a limited extent,” he told an audience in Vienna.

“Crucially, we cannot discuss away the structural deficiencies of the banking sector.”

Comparing banks to dinosaurs, Dombret said they should not hope size would save them from extinction due to threats such as a reduction in the overall amount of debt in the economy, competition from financial technology companies, an ageing population and low interest rates.

“A lesson from the era of the dinosaurs is still true today: size is not a goal in itself,” Dombret said. “Neither is the size of a single bank a guarantee for their survival, nor can the size of the sector as a whole protect it from crises.”

Also see more on the pension deficits story here:  Dallas Police see exodus as doubts rise on pension promises.

Ever since Senator Elizabeth Warren skillfully revealed how Wells executives used predatory cross-selling mandates to whip staff, prey on customers and pump up their personal stock holdings, the Wells Board of Directors (of which CEO Stumpf is also Chariman, let’s not forget) are infighting in the usual game of circle blame.

Since the Senate hearing, we have heard from Wells staff who were fired for bringing the account fraud to management’s attention before the LA Times broke the story in 2013. Stompf is next up in front of the House tomorrow. Word is he’s not contrite and the announcement yesterday of bonus clawbacks proposed for he and other top executives were not his idea.

Not that surprising, as John Kenneth Galbraith famously said: “People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.” Now there is also a class action lawsuit against the company from shareholders who say they were misled by management on the success of the company’s sales practices.   More to come for this company and others like it.  Is personal and financial accountability of corporate directors finally coming into vogue?

CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin discusses the ongoing boardroom struggle resulting from the revelations that Wells Fargo employees had been opening free-generating accounts without authorization for years. Here is a direct video link.