Federal spending multipliers suck says Larry Summers

A lesson on infrastructure from the Anderson Bridge fiasco


By Larry Summers

SOMETIMES SMALL stories capture large truths. So it is with the fiasco that is the repair of the Anderson Memorial Bridge, connecting Boston and Harvard Square. Rehabilitation of the 232-foot bridge began in 2012, at an estimated cost of about $20 million; four years later, there is no end date in sight and the cost of the project is mushrooming, to $26.5 million at last count.

This glacial pace of implementation does not reflect the intrinsic technical difficulty of the task. For comparison, the Anderson Bridge itself was originally completed in just 11 months in 1912. General George Patton constructed nearly 40 times as much bridging in six months as American soldiers crossed the Rhine to win World War II. And even modern-day examples abound; for instance, in 2011, 14 bridges in Medford were fixed in just 10 weekends. In contrast, the lapses exposed by the Anderson Bridge project hold key lessons for America’s broader inability to solve its infrastructure problems.

So Larry spends his entire career getting government involved in projects it cannot handle.  The asshole should be brought up on fraud charges, Harvard government administration department shut down, the the entire Berkeley economics staff fired.  Larry and his bonehead pals put these roadblocks in place.