A report released by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) in November 2007 warned of the growing size and severity of Canada’s looming infrastructure crisis. Authors of the report estimated the national municipal infrastructure deficit to be $123 billion. This does not include new infrastructure needs, which authors of the report estimated to be an additional $115 billion. In her recent article on disaster capitalism, Naomi Klein wrote, “The American Society of Civil Engineers has warned that the United States has fallen so far behind in maintaining its public infrastructure – roads, bridges, schools, dams – that it would take more than a trillion and a half dollars over five years to bring it back up to standard.” Other reports have estimated that the U.S. would have to spend as much as $500 billion over the next 20 years in order to overcome this crisis.
One year later, in November 2008, analysts, politicians and experts everywhere are at a loss for how anyone anywhere is ever going to be able to come up with a plan to combat a tanking global economy. Suddenly the light comes on and they … 1) give trillions of dollars to the banks in order to stimulate a housing and automotive industry so they can continue to build and sell their products to a populace that has neither the jobs nor the money to pay for them.