{"id":363153,"date":"2018-05-28T20:18:58","date_gmt":"2018-05-28T19:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/blackstone-blackrock-or-a-public-bank-putting-californias-funds-to-work\/"},"modified":"2018-05-28T20:18:58","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T19:18:58","slug":"blackstone-blackrock-or-a-public-bank-putting-californias-funds-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/blackstone-blackrock-or-a-public-bank-putting-californias-funds-to-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackstone, BlackRock or a Public Bank? Putting California\u2019s Funds to Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><em>California has over $700 billion parked in private banks earning minimal interest, private equity funds that contributed to the affordable housing crisis, or shadow banks of the sort that caused the banking collapse of 2008. These funds, or some of them, could be transferred to an infrastructure bank that generated credit for the state \u2013 while the funds remained safely on deposit in the bank.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>California needs over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.caeconomy.org\/reporting\/entry\/rebuilding-our-public-facilities-california-forwards-smart-investment-strat\">$700 billion in infrastructure<\/a> during the next decade. Where will this money come from? The <a href=\"http:\/\/prospect.org\/article\/trumps-infrastructure-plan-fiction-scam-actually-both\">$1.5 trillion infrastructure initiative<\/a> unveiled by President Trump in February 2018 includes only $200 billion in federal funding, and less than that after factoring in the billions in tax cuts in infrastructure-related projects. The rest is to come from cities, states, private investors and public-private partnerships (PPPs) one. And since city and state coffers are depleted, that chiefly means private investors and PPPs, which have a shady history at best.<span id=\"more-13770\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/research\/public-private-partnerships-to-revamp-u-s-infrastructure\/\">2011 report<\/a> by the Brookings Institution found that \u201cin practice [PPPs] have been dogged by contract design problems, waste, and unrealistic expectations.\u201d In their 2015 report \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.world-psi.org\/sites\/default\/files\/rapport_eng_56pages_a4_lr.pdf\">Why Public-Private Partnerships Don\u2019t Work<\/a>,\u201d Public Services International stated that \u201cexperience over the last 15 years shows that PPPs are an expensive and inefficient way of financing infrastructure and divert government spending away from other public services. They conceal public borrowing, while providing&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2018\/05\/blackstone-blackrock-or-a-public-bank-putting-californias-funds-to-work\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>California has over $700 billion parked in private banks earning minimal interest, private equity funds that contributed to the affordable housing crisis, or shadow banks of the sort that caused the banking collapse of 2008. These funds, or some of them, could be transferred to an infrastructure bank that generated credit for the state \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-363153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}