Push For National Infrastructure Bank Another Wall Street Scam

"Change you can believe," indeed.

I opened for my beloved,
But my beloved had turned away and was gone.
—Song of Solomon

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Should we expect anything less from the Financial Times of London endorsed candidate for the office of President of the United States? Beneath the smokescreen of a debate over deficits and spending we have a presidential imprimatur on the project du jour where politics is driven by bankrupt financiers: it's the "National Infrastructure Bank" promoted over the past week by the likes of Laura Tyson and Mark Zandi, with its critical private sector "partnership." The President's push for a National Infrastructure Bank is wrapped in a $50 billion economic stimulus proposal which, itself, is a pathetically inadequate sum. We are short infrastructure investment to the tune of a couple trillion dollars per year — this accumulated over decades — needing financing at most favorable rates of 1-2%, not the 7% or more the Infrastructure Bank is likely to muster.

It seems this poor President believes the United States is like some decrepit Caribbean nation where baldfaced vote buying is a way of life. Given we are in the dying days of soon-to-be-retired, "Gumby" leadership in the U.S. House and Senate the push appears to be on for the bankrupt securitization game to gain a permanent foothold in the U.S. Treasury. That's what a National Infrastructure Bank as proposed represents. Would anyone be the least bit shocked if a crisis were manufactured to hasten this end? The lesson of 2008 looms large...

—Tom Chechatka