Federal infrastructure will be a nightmare of Keynesian fraud

David Wessel, an honest economist as near as I can tell, shows us this chart. This is infrastructure spending by government, Federal is the blue and state and local the grey.

Notice that the state and local share is like five times the federal share?

Here is another estimate from governing magazine.

“According to the Congressional Budget Office, in 2007 state and local governments spent $103 billion on transportation and water infrastructure capital, while the federal government spent $58 billion. State and local governments thus accounted for more than 60 percent of public capital spending on such infrastructure.”

Now the Harvard Hero, Larry Summers never told us that state and local government carry the load.  All I heard was that if the federal government spent money it would have a high multiplier.  How would he get that answer since, in the past, state and local spending has always been selected?  Having reviewed the literature on the American recovery act, I am convinced that the higher multiplier came from local spending.

But, I digress.  The point here is that mandating infrastructure from DC will be a nightmare. A nightmare of inefficient light rail, a nightmare of theft by pension funds, a nightmare of environmentalists, a nightmare of Keynesian fraud, and a nightmare of state vs federal conflicts. I suggest strongly against it, and certainly DC would better serve us by avoiding their usual recession cycle.

But alas, it has begun, the Keynesian and their fraudulent statistics will keep all the bloggers busy for some time, an actual recession seems pleasant in comparison.