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The necessity for green bonds

My recent suggestion that fund managers wanted the government to issue green bonds in response to investor demand received short shrift from someone who, I think, thought he knew how markets worked. His claim was that such bond issues were not necessary, or desirable, despite my agreeing that they were.

I am, then, slightly pleased to note that the FT is firmly on my side,

Rilly?

Michael says:
May 21 2019 at 1:41 pm
These aren’t “Green” bonds as such. They are issued by the Dutch government, and repaid by the Dutch government – not through the proceeds of “Green” investments.

The only thing that makes these bonds “Green” is that the money raised will be used for environmentally friendly projects.

Which is fine, but they are just like any other government bond, where the proceeds could also be used for similar things. The only difference is in the name.

Reply
Richard Murphy says:
May 21 2019 at 2:03 pm
And the monitoring

That is quite emphatically not the same

Tee Hee.

14 thoughts on “The necessity for green bonds”

  1. “His claim was that such bond issues were not necessary, or desirable, despite my agreeing that they were.”

    How dare someone disagree with Spud once he hs agreed something!

  2. Right thinking tend to people agree with me. In particular I generally agree with myself. Candidly I therefore have unanimity in my own agreement with my opinions. The people who disagree with me come from the far-right, and include neoliberals like Tom Worstall etc and therefore exclude me.

  3. His claim was that such bond issues were not necessary, or desirable, despite my agreeing that they were.

    How dare he! HOW FUCKING DARE HE! I’M RICHARD MURPHY!!!

  4. You’d think fund managers would be able to knock up some sort of investment vehicle of their own if it’s so profitable and not have to beg the government to do it, which obviously isn’t offering these bonds because they are evil capitalists who like watching people suffer.

  5. He’s so far out of his depth in that dialogue its really embarrassing. He always states that German Govy bonds trade on a negative yield but it needed the fella to explain why. His philosophy is “to hell with knowledge, he who shouts loudest wins”..except he just sounds like a bloated self obsessed wind bag who has opinions on everything but has knowledge on hardly anything

  6. OT
    The BBC has a splurge on the “best all time ODI team and refuses to include votes for Brian Statham – if you want a fast bowler with a low run-ratethen Statham “if he misses, I hit” is the guy – even Yorkshiremen will agree (I wanted to include Fred Trueman as well)

  7. he just sounds like a bloated self obsessed wind bag who has opinions on everything but has knowledge on hardly anything

    He sounds like that because that’s exactly what he is.

  8. Jason, you don’t for one minute think that he’ll drop his self-important title once he leaves do you?

  9. He seems to be getting destroyed on the threads he has going at the moment,, on a couple he has literally picked up his ball and ran home. His normal strategy when he is out of his depth and has no comeback.

  10. ‘Professor’ is itself somewhat an honorary title so I think retired ‘proper’ professors can call themselves that after they retire.

    I’m not sure what the protocol is for Professors of collecting two tops from a cornflakes packet.

  11. There are ‘established professorships’ (or some similar term depending on university), that is a ‘chair’ created by a generous endowment etc, retires are generally honoured with the courtesy tile professor emeritus. And then there are the rest; professor in such cases being merely a pay grade: bring in enough grant income, publish enough papers in the right journals, (add some extra points for being a ‘minority’) and you too can be a professor.

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