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eridani

(51,907 posts)
Wed Jun 4, 2014, 05:13 AM Jun 2014

Infrastructure Sticker Shock: Financing Costs More than Construction

Answer--public banking

http://www.nationofchange.org/infrastructure-sticker-shock-financing-costs-more-construction-1401800870

California needs $700 billion in infrastructure over the next decade, and the state doesn’t have that sort of money in its general fund. Where will the money come from? Proposals include more private investment, but that means the privatization of what should have been public assets. Infrastructure is touted to investors as the next “fixed income." But fixed income to investors means perpetual payments by taxpayers and rate-payers for something that should have been public property.

There is another alternative. In the last five years, China has managed to build an impressive 4000 miles of high-speed rail. Where did it get the money? The Chinese government has a hidden funding source: it owns its own banks. That means it gets its financing effectively interest-free.

All banks actually have a hidden funding source. The Bank of England just admitted in its quarterly bulletin that banks don’t lend their deposits. They simply advance credit created on their books. If someone is going to be creating our national money supply and collecting interest on it, it should be we the people, through our own publicly-owned banks.

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