Hostile Takeover Scenario

[elfs]

Ezra Klein writes:

People say that the government should be run more like a business. So imagine you are CEO of the government. Your bridges are crumbling. Your schools are falling apart. Your air traffic control system doesn't even use GPS. The Society of Civil Engineers gave your infrastructure a D grade and estimated that you need to make more than $2 trillion in repairs and upgrades.

Sorry, chief. No one said being CEO was easy.

But there's good news, too. Because of the recession, construction materials are cheap. So, too, is the labor. And your borrowing costs? They've never been lower. That means a dollar of investment today will go much further than it would have five years ago -- or is likely to go five years from now. So what do you do?

If you're thinking like a CEO, the answer is easy: You invest. You get it done. Happily, that's what the administration is proposing to do. But its plan is too modest. The $50 billion bump in infrastructure spending it has proposed is only for surface transportation. The infrastructure bank envisioned in the proposal is also likely to be limited to transportation. And as for our water systems, our schools, our levees? This is not a time for half-measures. It's a rare opportunity to do what we need to do and to save money doing it.

Unfortunately for Ezra, the shareholders are balking at the outlays; the conservatives complain that the debt will hold back the stock's value, and the liberals complain that these proposals will harm future dividend payments. Neither is accurate, but perception is everything. So she shareholders balk, and complain, and at annual meetings browbeat the board into doing nothing at all, and when the times comes they vote to change the board into one that will try to get along with the existing infrastructure.

Eventually, of course, the infrastructure fails and the corporation goes bust. I wonder what the US Federal Government's bankruptcy sale will look like? Will China bid on Yellowstone, and if so, will they want it for a tourist attraction, or a place to build condos?

Comments

[shunra.livejournal.com]

How much will we recoup for our military bases, I wonder...

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

As long as we don't see Wayne Bedford (proprietor of the Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates franchise) buying the Enterprise to make it the centerpiece for a floating mass of boats bringing hordes of Refus to North America...