Monday, May 06, 2013

Seattle Times reminds us that Al Gore purchased another mansion in 2010 ($8.9 million, Montecito); also Gore's Generation Investment Management owned a 10 percent stake in the now-defunct Chicago Climate Exchange

How Al Gore amassed a fortune that rivals Mitt Romney’s | The Seattle Times
In 2010 -- weeks before the Gores announced they were dissolving their 40-year marriage -- he purchased an oceanfront six- bedroom, $8.9 million villa in Montecito, California, where Oprah Winfrey and Kirk Douglas have lived.
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Such lavish living isn’t lost on Gore’s critics. In 2007, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, using a public records request, published Gore’s Nashville home utility bill, showing it used almost 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006 -- 20 times the national average household consumption.
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By the time of the Capricorn investment, he was already starting to rake in cash from Generation Investment Management - - a fund that incorporates “sustainability” into its investment approach. Gore co-founded GIM in 2004 with former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Managing Director David W. Blood.
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In another instance, GIM took a 10 percent stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange, set up in 2003 by former derivatives guru Richard Sandor to take advantage of what the exchange’s founders hoped would be a government-mandated price on carbon. The exchange ran into the same headwinds as Camco and was sold to Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange Inc. in May 2010 for $581 million. It was later shut as carbon prices fell to all- time lows.
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“Al Gore is like the preacher touting his moral purity and superiority,” Kish said. “Yet it turns out that heeding his preachings is directly linked to his financial interests.”

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