The Banking and Strategy Initiative

Instructing the infrastructure dollar to get jobs | O'nomics (socialone.info)

This article at our US blog might work for a lot of governments around the world, in

(One) Knowing where the money is being spent
(Two) Doing your home work and following up when you are in government
(Three) Not skewing up strategy for pro history (new deal) or pro innovation (credit crisis)

and why it’s about O’nomics and not Obama

2009 was the year of the stimulus for the US. Though the Capitol talked mostly only about stimulus in terms of funds for highways and on setting up of recovery.gov, We started taking notice by June that indeed it was hard to track and hard to estimate..a lot of state and some police projects were awarded at the level of county and job savings ascribed to each to get to recovery.gov. Not entirely accurate but definitely a notch or two better than any other spending program i know. The rest of the jobs program will be best utilised probably by the same jobs..new roads, highways that needed even just guard rails, railway infrastructure.

In February, Obama made whistle-stop tours and exhorted the people to see how much they needed these highways and bridges, and how these were unfinished business:

Mr. Obama is proposing what he says is the largest increase in infrastructure spending since President Dwight Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s.

“We will invest more than $100 billion and create nearly 400,000 jobs rebuilding our roads, our railways, our dangerously deficient dams, bridges and levees,” he said.

The president said funding infrastructure projects will also help create jobs in other areas of the economy. He specifically mentioned the Caterpillar company, which makes much of the heavy equipment used in road projects. Caterpillar recently announced more than 20,000 layoffs.

“And today, the Chairman and CEO of Caterpillar said that if the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan passes, his company would be able to rehire some of those employees,” he said.

via VOA

This book shows the earlier attempt in the nineties by the mostly infamous and highly leveraged Macquuarie

the_content()

By July, we were comparing dollars at each city:

Track These At Recovery.Gov In Time | NY Times

The NY Times story here was obviously received well because of the graphics and the comparative data, much of which may need to be reworked now. A look at recovery.gov shows 40-45% of the funds being drawn by county programs such as the 11921 awards in California, mostly grants and around 10% ($1.3 billion ) in contracts, going to police stations buying LCD Flat screen TVs and Crowd Control System upgrades, waste water collection systems, increase health center services and presumably he roads, bridges and the highways.

Out of the $158.7 billion awarded ( 58%) 13% has been received and more can probably be done now in receiving those funds and working out what is wrong with the process.

Nonetheless, many in the developing world and even Europe could also use the recovery.gov example to start cleaning the Augean stables of public works. Well begun is half done. But with only 12000 jobs related in Arizona and jobs being reported in fictional districts, well..someone needs to figure out what is wrong and fix it. Similarly Texas has only reported 20000 jobs created and the country as a whole is already reporting 600000 jobs created by the stimulus..obviously not going to match with the rising unemployment numbers..and i haven’t heard from any of these folk on twitter..strange?

In California, almost 45% has been allocated by the Department of Education ( 8 out of 18 billion ) and more than 15% to the Department of Transportation – Have people really seen these half a million jobs making a difference? Have these funds to school districts saved the schools or the teachers? There however the reports are still missing, probably dwarfed by the enormity of the task involved

An example of the agency wise allocation is in the included screen grab for Alabama on the right. It is a great time for people at these agencies to get back with the results. America needs it before going on another joyride with public funds. If you go by these statistics the journos at Reuters have done a pretty ‘funny’ piece with the stats

The second stimulus program may just be going the wrong way without a detailed success/failure report on the first one.

The new Jobs program

The “Jobs for Main street” , Whitehouse’s own repartee to the Wall street cats, is equally unrepentant getting another $40 bllion for Department or Transportation, to teach us the ‘new deal’ all over again. The ARRA year has gone by and we are still thinking about another set of roads that will be up in ’120 days’. I thought the overwhelming majority passed it because it was creating jobs? Espeially now with the shadow inventory showing, it is time to tread a little cautiously and on sure footing not ‘sidings and tarpools’ The ARRA bill already has 7886 transportation projects underway.

An example of others who could have got the money is below from The Huffington Post

Demand for high-speed rail funding has well exceeded the expectations that existed when the recovery bill was signed last year. Currently, there are close to $60 billion in project applications from more than 30 states competing for the first $8 billion in federal high-speed rail funding, which will go out in a few months. Domestic and foreign investors and private industry have taken notice of the government’s initiative and the sector has exploded over the last few months, providing hope for new employment that can offset the massive losses in the automotive industry. All eyes are on Congress to see if they will follow through on the initial down payment in their next major transportation spending bill.

Jobs are being lost every month even two years after the recession began. While the number has stopped growing very fast, the number of jobs lost is growing every month without fail. These businesses cannot just wait for banks to start lending, and pretty soon we are going to be out of money to print. We were losing more than 600,000 jobs every month just a few weeks back. This recovery will take much longer than in the Asia and Latam markets. The unemployment rate is still above 10% even after November showed up a huge improvement to just 11000 lost jobs ( just Kentucky lost 5000 out of this!) 15.4 million are still looking for work hopelessly stuck with a lasting unemployment with even the limited foreign worker visas going unrequited in this situation. Th elong term unemployed, looking for work for more than 6 months are a good 38.3% of the unemployed, another record for America.

More foreclosures

Even as dismal numbers from the loan modification program caused an extension of the program till October 2010 ( see Geithner extends TARP) the latest shadow inventory nos ( detailing foreclosures shocked the nation with 1.7 million available for sale from foreclosures. St Louis got an award for 800 modifications to save homes from foreclosure! There seems to be no comparison between the two figures, and more is required than depending on just road construction to make new jobs

Probably some of the economists at Obama and Biden’s offices are already at work untangling the confusion of the stimulus and getting ready to tell us what has worked. I think it’s time. Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog at O’nomics

• How To Get Hired & Get The Job You Want By Volunteering This guest post is by Mrs. Accountability, who writes for...
• Top 30 Adobe AIR Apps for Designers and Developers [/caption] Many people think of Twitter apps when they think...
• The 'Real Unemployment' Needs Real Solutions [/caption] by: Leo Hindery, Jr. chairs the US Economy/Smart Globalization...
• Unemployment above 10% Unemployment has soared to 10.2%. That is the highest in...
• The Cash For Clunkers Program Will Not Work The stated goal of the federal Cash For Clunkers program...