© David Leo Veksler / CC BY-SA 2.0A highway interchange in Yanan, China.
Comment: This is, of course, a very Western perspective on China's OBOR project. Such a massive undertaking isn't merely designed so China can reign supreme in the world's economy. Rather, it is designed to help lift themselves as well as countries with mutual interests out of the imposed controls from Western systems. Since the US global economy is based on chaos and instability, it's a pretty worthwhile pursuit. The US is rapidly losing influence in Eurasia in no small part because it has overextended itself militarily. The Chinese and Russians are implementing quite a number of institutions and projects that have been drawing their neighbors into mutually beneficial relationships. And why shouldn't they? They are their neighbors, not America's.
On Feb. 12, Trump's own infrastructure initiative was finally unveiled. Perhaps intending to trump China's $1 trillion megaproject, the administration has now upped the ante from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, or at least that's how the initiative is billed. But as Donald Cohen observes in The American Prospect, it's really only $200 billion, the sole sum that is to come from federal funding. And it's not even that after factoring in the billions in tax cuts in infrastructure-related projects. The rest of the $1.5 trillion is to come from cities, states and private investors, and because city and state coffers are depleted, that chiefly means private investors. The focus of the administration's plan is on public-private partnerships, which, as Slane notes, are not suitable for many of the most critical infrastructure projects, because they lack the sort of ongoing funding stream-such as a toll or fee-that would attract private investors. Public-private partnerships also drive up costs, compared with financing through municipal bonds.
Comment: And he was fascinated by ISIS too. Not surprising. Pathologicals tend to attract other pathologicals, regardless of the ideology. See also: