"We will move heaven and earth to ensure that bond holders will be paid on schedule."HD Palmer, finance spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to the AP. The correct mindset for the privatopia scenario and a good demonstration on how global financial markets will increasingly dictate the priorities of all governance.
“In hindsight, Japan should have built public works that address the problems it faces today, like aging, energy and food sources. This obsession with building roads is a holdover from an earlier era.”
Takehiko Hobo, a professor emeritus of public finance at Shimane University to the NYTimes. It's becoming increasingly obvious that nation-states don't have a clue on where to invest stimulus that will yield long-term wealth improvement. That's yet another sign that the current nation-state dominated system is at the end of its productive rope. Worse, absent that insight, corrupt allocations (aka looting of the public sphere or state-capture) will continue to dominate.