{"id":201757,"date":"2021-03-14T07:43:05","date_gmt":"2021-03-14T04:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/stimulus-potholes-aplenty-thanks-to-infrastructure-red-ink-from-democrats\/"},"modified":"2021-03-14T07:43:05","modified_gmt":"2021-03-14T04:43:05","slug":"stimulus-potholes-aplenty-thanks-to-infrastructure-red-ink-from-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/stimulus-potholes-aplenty-thanks-to-infrastructure-red-ink-from-democrats\/","title":{"rendered":"#Stimulus potholes aplenty thanks to infrastructure red ink from Democrats"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Stimulus potholes aplenty thanks to infrastructure red ink from Democrats<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\u201cEveryone is now excited about infrastructure,\u201d a Democratic Party operative with ties to Wall Street declared late last week following passage of President Biden\u2019s vacuous, $1.9 trillion stimulus bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When pressed by Lydia Moynihan of Fox Business on who \u201ceveryone\u201d actually is, the operative rattled off the following names: \u201cProgressives, moderates, everyone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Translation: Get ready for another mindless spending spree that may even surpass the last one.<\/p>\n

Infrastructure spending is all too often mythologized as one of those public-policy concepts that\u2019s a \u201cwin-win\u201d for everyone. Potholes get filled, bridges get mended, our electric grid is fortified, and miraculously the whole thing pays for itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jobs are created. The economy improves and if Wall Street makes a few bucks selling municipal bonds to finance the spending, it\u2019s all for the common good.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The reality is often far different. These plans rack up massive debts, and rarely deliver what\u2019s promised in terms of jobs and economic growth.<\/p>\n

Bureaucrats make lousy project managers. One major reason taxes remain so high in New York is that we have issued so much debt to fix our \u201ccrumbling infrastructure\u201d that\u2019s in a constant crumbling state no matter how much money we spend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

History of this waste is replete with examples. Remember Solyndra? The solar-energy startup received hundreds of millions of dollars in loan guarantees during the Obama years only to file for bankruptcy. On a state level, count the number of \u201ctunnels to nowhere\u201d that have been built with money that was supposed to finance necessary infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also recall how few real \u201cshovel-ready jobs\u201d were created by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and then-President Barack Obama and VP Joe Biden via their post-financial-crisis infrastructure-spending bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"It
Solar-energy startup Solyndra received hundreds of millions of dollars in loan guarantees during the Obama years only to file for bankruptcy<\/figcaption>
AP Photo\/Paul Sakuma, File<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So few, in fact, Obama cracked jokes about it. The US economy struggled for years after his $800 billion \u201cRecovery and Reinvestment Act\u201d that did little more than allow profligate state governments, like the one operating in Albany, to finance budget and pension shortfalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But infrastructure spending\u2019s lousy track record isn\u2019t stopping President Biden and Democrats in Congress to trip<\/a>le down on this folly. And I\u2019m told he and his minions are looking for support from the nation\u2019s big banks to help with the pitch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s point man in all of this is a bureaucrat named Cedric Richmond. A former congressman whose district covers New Orleans, Richmond\u2019s title is officially \u201csenior adviser to the president.\u201d That underplays his power inside the Biden White House and his role in shaping economic policy including the infrastructure legislation, I am told by banking executives.<\/p>\n

In a brief interview last week, Richmond told Fox Business: \u201cWe haven\u2019t decided on a number for infrastructure or determined the path to passage. The president will determine those details and announce himself, but we don\u2019t have a timeline or a number.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then he hung up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richmond, however, has been more forthcoming with bank executives, and has been in constant contact with them discussing the new administration\u2019s economic priorities, I am told.<\/p>\n

The thinking is that Wall Street could promote the economic virtues of the plan in research reports. The banks can also pressure GOP lawmakers who receive their campaign cash to support a big infrastructure-spending plan that \u201cis great for everyone,\u201d as one banker put it.<\/p>\n

The Biden people won\u2019t have to twist many arms on Wall Street. The banks are heavily regulated, so they need allies in government to blunt anti-bank progressives like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. They also stand to make a lot of money financing various projects in the bill, which according to my banking sources has been whispered at around $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion spread over several years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Details are still up in the air, but here\u2019s how people on Wall Street believe the legislation might take shape. The federal government might not have to spend the entire $2.5 trillion. Some of the money might be delivered to states and then leveraged when governors float municipal debt (underwritten by banks) for certain projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Private equity firms may join with state, local and even the federal government to form \u201cpublic-private partnerships\u201d to build stuff like roads and electrical grids. Again, the federal money gets leveraged because the PE firms put some cash into projects even if that means every time you pay a toll to cross the Throgs Neck Bridge the money might go in the coffers of, say, a PE firm like KKR.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Again, all this sounds great until you consider the track record of such arrangements: if they are working so well, why is our infrastructure in such a state of disrepair?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not a single Republican voted for Biden\u2019s COVID-stimulus bill. The American people, at least for now, don\u2019t seem to mind that we\u2019re spending $1.9 trillion to provide little COVID relief other than putting money into people\u2019s pockets who have jobs, while bailing out states that mishandled the pandemic through economy-crushing lockdowns.<\/p>\n

They might not care that we blow another trillion or two on infrastructure. But that might change when they see debt levels soar, interest rates spike and their taxes go up to finance a few more Solyndras and some tunnels to nowhere.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Stimulus potholes aplenty thanks to infrastructure red ink from Democrats” \u201cEveryone is now excited about infrastructure,\u201d a Democratic Party operative with ties to Wall Street declared late last week following passage of President Biden\u2019s vacuous, $1.9 trillion stimulus bill.\u00a0 When pressed by Lydia Moynihan of Fox Business on who \u201ceveryone\u201d actually is, the operative rattled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/03\/JoeBidenInfras.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[18203,97589,10701,5069,76816,72036,5070,991,46483,87204,70360],"class_list":["post-201757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-3-13-21","tag-democrats","tag-economy","tag-federal-budget","tag-infrastructure","tag-jobs","tag-joe-biden","tag-taxes","tag-u-s-debt","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}