Carbon Credit Market Offers Exciting New Derivative Risks

According to a report on CNet, the United States' first carbon exchange market is set to go live on September 10th of this year.

CNet: A crack at pricing carbon in the U.S.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, pronounced "Reggie") is scheduled to go online September 10. It's a cap-and-trade system for carbon that electric power generators in 10 Northeast states need to participate in.
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The way a carbon cap-and-trade system works is that participants have to purchase allowances that allow them to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide.
These allowances can be bought and sold. So if a power generator buys the right to emit 40 million tons of carbon, but manages to fall under that threshold, the company can sell those credits to a power generator that has gone over their ceiling.

What's fantastic about trading carbon credits is that it kills two birds with one stone: by creating a thrilling new three-card monte game derivatives market that will allow players who bet in the right direction to amass huge amounts of cash while at the same time allowing everyone involved to bask in the radiance of the illusion that somehow the world is being made a better place at the same time. This is the kind of high-volatility market that can appeal to everyone from overcaffeinated energy traders to brie-eating Volvo drivers! That sort of unifying effort is to be applauded.

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Samsung unseats Vizio as #1 TV brand

More evidence of the tospy-turvy Christmas retail season we're in for:

CNet.com Samsung regains TV lead; Vizio back to No. 2

A sense of order has been restored to the North American TV market this quarter.
A few months after newcomer Vizio stunned the flat-panel television industry by ranking No. 1 in market share for the second quarter of 2007, the old stalwarts have reclaimed their positions. Samsung moved back to No. 1 in overall flat-panel shipments with 11.8 percent of the total market, according to DisplaySearch. Vizio fell to No. 2 with a 10.2-percent share, down from 12 percent the previous quarter. The rest of the list includes Sharp at 10 percent, Sony at 8.6, and Funai (which makes the Sylvania brand) at a 7.2 percent share.
Samsung was able to regain its position because it has a strong presence in both the liquid crystal display (LCD) and plasma markets. Vizio is ranked No. 2 in LCD, but not in the top five of plasma vendors. Another key difference is Samsung sells mostly through national retailers, while Vizio's products have been popular in club stores.

Isn't it interesting how the only Japanese brands in the top five are Sony and Sharp? Of those two, Sony is the only venerable brand, Sharp being a relative upstart to the video business. And overall, three of the top five best selling brands can be considered price point, or bargain basement entry level sets. Maybe I'm prejudiced, but I still don't consider Samsung to be a first tier brand for television quality.

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Newsflash: Consumers perfectly happy with DVD

Below is a link to a lengthy screed on CNet.com about the apparent stalemate in the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD format war, and how the unlikely winner seems to be old-fashioned DVD's.

CNet.com: False starts in race to future of DVDs

I have said from the outset that this format war is not really Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD, it's Industry vs. Consumers. As I've noted all along, it seems that the buying public is just not rising to the bait this time.

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