Lawrence Summers wants to get the quality infrastructure jobs now, and leave the bill to future generations

Sir, Lawrence Summers writes “Infrastructure investment can create quality jobs [and] expand the economy’s capacity in the medium term and mitigate the huge maintenance burden we would otherwise pass on to the next generation” “Building the case for greater infrastructure investment” September 12. 

And since that is based on taking on more public debt that shamefully sounds like: “Dear lets go out tonight to enjoy that great restaurant. We can leave the bill to our grandchildren, as the interest rates they have to pay are so low.”

Summers backs up his proposal with some calculations that start with “The McKinsey Global Institute has estimated a 20 per cent rate of return on such investments.”

Well Professor Summers, and McKinsey, and so many other, because they do not know, or because they are pushing a statist agenda, completely ignore the fact that currently the sovereign, meaning the government represented by government bureaucrats, for the purpose of setting the capital requirements for banks, is risk weighted at 0%; while We the People, represented by SMEs and entrepreneurs have to carry a risk weight of 100%.

That subsidizes the borrowing costs of the government, by the taxing the possibilities of accessing bank credit of those who we need most to have access to bank credit.

Of course much infrastructure investment needs to be done, but, in order for there being an economy that could use such infrastructure, much more important is it to take down that odious regulatory wall.

Sir, again, banks are no longer financing our grandchildren’s future, they are only refinancing mine, yours, Professor Summers’s and all McKinsey’s safer past.

What a disgraceful way of giving the finger to that intergenerational social contract Edmund Burke wrote about.

@PerKurowski ©