Robert Reich Explains The Obvious, And Does It Beautifully!

Rebuild America’s Infrastructure

Seems like only yes­ter­day con­ser­v­a­tive nabobs of neg­a­tiv­ity pre­dicted Amer­ica’s bal­loon­ing bud­get deficit would gen­er­ate soar­ing in­fla­tion and crip­pling costs of ad­di­tional fed­eral bor­row­ing.
Re­mem­ber Stan­dard & Poor’s down­grade of the United States? Re­call the in­tense worry about in­vestors’ con­fi­dence in gov­ern­ment bonds — Amer­ica’s IOUs?
Hmmm.

Last week ten-year yields on U.S. Trea­suries closed at 1.83 per­cent. In other words, they were wrong.

In fact, it’s cheaper than ever for the United States to bor­row. That’s be­cause global in­vestors des­per­ately want the safety of dol­lars. Al­most every­where else on the globe is riskier. Eu­rope is in a debt cri­sis, many de­vel­op­ing na­tions are gripped by fears the con­ta­gion will spread to them, Japan re­mains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, China’s growth is slow­ing.

Put this to­gether with two other facts:

Un­em­ploy­ment in Amer­ica re­mains sky-high. 14 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are out of work and 25 mil­lion are look­ing for full-time jobs.

The na­tion’s in­fra­struc­ture is crum­bling. Our roads, bridges, water and sewer sys­tems, sub­ways, gas pipelines, ports, air­ports, and school build­ings are des­per­ately in need of re­pair. De­ferred main­te­nance is tak­ing a huge toll.

Now con­nect the dots. Any­one with half a brain will see this is the ideal time to bor­row money from the rest of the world to put Amer­i­cans to work re­build­ing the na­tion’s in­fra­struc­ture.

Prob­lem is, too many in Wash­ing­ton have less than half a brain.