Category Archives: Infrastructure

Why Bernie Sanders Should Add a Job Guarantee to His Policy Agenda

Bernie has unapologetically rejected sclerotic visions of what is ‘politically possible’. And now he should add the Job Guarantee to his list of issues.

Dutch Pension Fund Escalates War Against Private Equity Secrecy, Won’t Invest in Funds that Fail to Disclose All Fees and Costs

By challenging the private equity secrecy and fee-gouging regimes, a major Dutch pension fund shows how craven its US counterparts are.

Why the Greek Government Rejects a Grexit

Why the Greek government and Greek citizens recognize that a Grexit is a terrible idea for them.

Michael Hudson: Europe Tilts East Towards China

The sudden rush of countries joining China’s infrastructure bank, including supposed US allies like the UK, Germany, and France, demonstrates the desire of not just emerging but also advanced economies to have access to international institutions that are not dominated by the US. Whether the infrastructure bank actually winds up being better, as opposed to simply different than existing institutions remains to be seen. But as Hudson describes, the World Bank sets a low bar.

Major American Allies Ignore U.S. Pleas and Join China’s Development Bank

China’s development bank is a salvo at America’s dollar-driven financial hegemony. The US has good reason to worry about its apparent appeal.

Yanis Varoufakis: Presenting an Agenda for Europe at Ambrosetti

If you followed Yanis Varoufakis before he became a household word (at least in Europe and in finance circles), you’ll recognize that he is making a layperson-friendly case for the Eurozone reforms that he, Stuart Holland, and Jamie Galbraith call A Modest Proposal. A new wrinkle is that he argues that the scarcity of bonds eligible for QE argues for one of its ideas, infrastructure spending funded by the EIB (those bonds would presumably be eligible for QE purchases).

Joe Firestone: The Interactive Voter Choice System: A Technological Fix for Failing Democracies

Joe Firestone has been persistent in doing the very important work on the IVCS (Interactive Voter Choice System). We could probably build a full-scale IVCS for the price of a single F-35, and it wouldn’t even catch on fire! We could pilot one for a fraction of the cost of the ObamaCare Marketplace. So why don’t we?

Two Detroits, Separate and Unequal: A Journey Across a City Divided

Rather than growing closer in the coming post-bankruptcy era, many residents fear that these two Detroits — already so separate and unequal — will have increasingly divergent futures.

G20 Finance Ministers Reveal Impotence in the Face of Rising Stresses

Yves here. It’s hardly uncommon for big international pow-wows like the G20 to produce grand-sounding statements that when read carefully call for unthreatening, which usually means inconsequential, next steps. But this G20 just past was revealing, in a bad way, about the state of international political economy.

Media Giving Corporate Executives a Free Pass on Their Value Extraction

Executive rentiers and their media lackeys are invoking the canard that they can’t find decent investment opportunities. The truth is that they’ve exhausted the first and second lines of value extraction, that of labor-squeezing and disinvestment, and aren’t prepared to accept the lower but still attractive returns of taking real economy risks.

Abigail Field: Privatization Is Driven By Private Greed and Public Cowardice (and Public Greed, Too)

“Privatization” and “public-private-partnerships” for infrastructure and other public assets are scams driven by private greed and public cowardice.

Will “Highway Cliff” Allow Obama to Revive “Public/Private Partnership” Infrastructure Scam?

Your humble blogger may be reading more than is warranted into the synchronistic timing of stories in two different newspapers about financing highway construction. But it nevertheless looks sus.