"It is important to note that capital accumulated from making things (production) is now being used to accumulate property, a financial asset."
Eh, real estate is a tangible asset. Only to a modest extent has it been financialized.
(The use of derivatives and, worse, insane leverage on said derivatives, is an unfortunate result of an effort to further financialize real estate to a degree that allows for meaningful [infinite?] Wall Street participation in what is most typically a slow moving, wildly inefficient, high-localized, and non-commodity tangible asset.
These purely financial assets and engineering/leverage are how you get the Great Recession. I wouldn't conflate those things with a simple purchase of real estate, though.)
Go on Charles, elaborate on how you know more about climate change than a professor of atmospheric science. While you're at it, show us how your dismissal of a presumed expert's viewpoint is completely different from the way Republicans do it.
@9 You seem to be implying that there is no gradient in expertise between Mudede and Mass. Somehow I doubt that. Appeals to authority can be fallacious, but in this case I think there might be something to be said for what degrees each of them holds. That doesn't necessarily prove Mass right, but it would be nice if Charles, y'know, defended his viewpoint. Bonus points for calling one's Internet post a "rant" and not the other's, especially when this is the second or third snipe Charles has made.
@6, thanks for hitting that point. I personally thought the author's comment was not a knock on derivatives and commoditization of real property, but an oblique reference to the Communist Manifesto. Perhaps the Stranger staff has gone a Bern too far?
@7 -- And the cited report suggests Amazon could attain $3T in SALES, not WORTH as claimed in the headline. Those are two very different things, as anyone with even a make-believe grasp of economics should realize.
Charles,
WHAT IS YOUR ISSUE? I have said NOTHING about the fires in Canada. Zero.. Would you PLEASE give me a call and I can tell you about climate change, natural variability, and how can ascribe connections between extremes and global warming. I would be happy to explain it to you. And if you don't believe me, you can talk to other climate experts in my department. You really owe your readers an informed opinion...cliff mass
As a geoscientist myself, I have to once again side with Dr. Mass. While global warming will lead to more severe weather and we may already be feeling some of those effects, it is irresponsible at this point to blame any one event on it.
@18 We can also read what other experts have to say:
“The conditions that made these wildfires possible — namely, the unusually warm and dry winter the region has experienced — almost certainly had a climate change component,”
Why is Saskatchewan seeing so many wildfires this year?
"In a short answer, climate change," Toddi Steelman told CBC Saskatchewan's Blue Sky.
Steelman is the executive director of the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan and is one of the leading experts in the country on wildfires.
'Nuff said.
'Nuff said.
Hyperlinks in HTML
Eh, real estate is a tangible asset. Only to a modest extent has it been financialized.
(The use of derivatives and, worse, insane leverage on said derivatives, is an unfortunate result of an effort to further financialize real estate to a degree that allows for meaningful [infinite?] Wall Street participation in what is most typically a slow moving, wildly inefficient, high-localized, and non-commodity tangible asset.
These purely financial assets and engineering/leverage are how you get the Great Recession. I wouldn't conflate those things with a simple purchase of real estate, though.)
WHAT IS YOUR ISSUE? I have said NOTHING about the fires in Canada. Zero.. Would you PLEASE give me a call and I can tell you about climate change, natural variability, and how can ascribe connections between extremes and global warming. I would be happy to explain it to you. And if you don't believe me, you can talk to other climate experts in my department. You really owe your readers an informed opinion...cliff mass
Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University’s
Earth System Science Center
Toddi Steelman