National Infrastructure Bank: Another Trilateral Ripoff?

National Infrastructure Bank: Another Trilateral Ripoff?

By Patrick Wood
September 9, 2010

Obama’s slick 2010 Labor Day speech that promised an additional Federal stimulus for a sick economy, was a ringer. Here's why -- buried in the $50 bil­lion infra­struc­ture stimulus promise is the fol­lowing statement:

“It sets up an Infra­struc­ture Bank to leverage fed­eral dol­lars and focus on the smartest invest­ments.”

Infrastructure Bank? Smartest investments?

Obama would have you think that this was his brainchild, but it is not. It will, however, effec­tively cen­tralize another key area of our economy, namely infra­struc­ture, into a gov­ern­ment run enter­prise that mostly ben­efits the pri­vate capital of the global elite, and in particular, members of the Trilateral Commission.

For a historical perspective, we need to look back to August 2007 during the Bush administration when S.1926 was intro­duced (National Infra­struc­ture Bank Act of 2007) by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE).

The failed bill pro­vided for an inde­pen­dent gov­ern­ment entity (think FDIC, for instance) with a five-member board appointed by the Pres­i­dent and con­firmed by the Senate.

In 2009, the Obama Administration promoted similar legislation introduced into the House as H.R.2521 by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) to "facilitate efficient investments and financing of infrastructure projects and new job creation through the establishment of a National Infrastructure Development Bank, and for other purposes." [Emphasis added] The Administration was so certain that this would pass (it has not) that the 2010 budget included appropriations for a National Infrastructure Bank. (See Investing for Success, Brookings Institution, p.11)

Dodd him­self called S.1926 a “unique and pow­erful public-private part­ner­ship” that would offer a “fresh solu­tion to the chal­lenge of rebuilding the nation’s infra­struc­ture.” It was orig­i­nally to be funded by a $60 bil­lion bond issue which would be then lever­aged with pri­vate cap­ital. Obama’s new twist is to forget the bond and just give $50 bil­lion of tax­payer money directly to kick­-start the NIB.

A public-private partnership in this context is reminiscent of the World Bank's Public-Private Partnership in Infrastructure program (PPPI) whose objective "is to provide capacity building to help client governments create the proper environment to develop successful and sustainable PPPs, as well as to provide technical assistance to client countries in issues related to PPP program design, development, and implementation."

However, the World Bank explains their agenda more fully: "The program initially focuses on core infrastructure sectors– energy, water, transport, and telecommunications– and will progressively cover the main social sectors such as education, health and housing." This may suggest the intended meaning of "other purposes" mentioned above in H.R.2421.

Obama made no men­tion of NIB rev­enue bonds that would be used to pay back loans with by tolls, fees, etc. Most importantly, all infra­struc­ture spending/lending/appropriations would cir­cum­vent Con­gress for­ever more. In fact, the whole affair would be off-agency, meaning that the accounting for it would not show up in the national budget, but would potentially create a huge contingent liability for taxpayers down the road.

So, who were the policy wonks behind the NIB and S.1926 in 2007? (You know it wasn’t Dodd or Hagel!)

Fortunately, the press release on Dodd’s own web­site gives full credit:

“Last year, Sen­a­tors Dodd and Hagel signed on to a set of ‘Guiding Prin­ci­ples for Strength­ening America’s Infra­struc­ture’ devel­oped by the Center for Strategic and Inter­na­tional Studies (CSIS) Com­mis­sion on Public Infra­struc­ture,” said CSIS Pres­i­dent and CEO John Hamre. “These prin­ci­ples were estab­lished to rec­om­mend changes to rebuild America’s decaying infra­struc­ture. CSIS is proud to have helped stim­u­late this impor­tant initiative.

Proud, indeed!

This trai­torous and glob­alist think tank was orig­i­nally estab­lished by a founding member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, David Abshire. The current CSIS board is stacked with notorious Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers like Zbig­niew Brzezinski, William Brock, Harold Brown, Richard Armitage, Carla Hills (archi­tect of NAFTA), Henry Kissinger, Joseph Nye, James Schlesinger and Brent Scow­croft.

This supposedly "bi-partisan" S.1926 was subsequently co-sponsored by twelve other senators including Hillary Clinton and, you guessed it, then-Senator Barrack Hussein Obama. This is one more piece of evi­dence that both Clinton and Obama operate solidly within the Tri­lat­eral orbit.

There is no argu­ment that the U.S. infra­struc­ture is a sham­bles. The Amer­ican Society of Civil Engi­neers esti­mates that it would take $1.6 tril­lion to fix it. The final tab will be much higher.

Of course, nei­ther the Feds nor the states have that kind of money but the Trilateral Commission has repeatedly proven its ability to sucker the tax­payers into paying for the Commission's global trade schemes… in this case, the final imple­men­ta­tion of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) trade routes throughout the U.S.

As reported in my detailed 2005 report, Toward a North American Union, NAFTA was created in the first place exclusively by members of the Trilateral Commission: George H.W. Bush, Carla Hills, Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

In recent years, NAFTA's infrastructure grid has been developed and plotted by an organization known as the North America Corridor Coalition, Inc. (NASCO).

The recently updated NASCO web site shows a plethora of infrastructure plans that are tightly integrated with the implementation of NAFTA, which will undoubtedly be brought into play through the new National Infrastructure Bank.

Citizen revolts in Texas and Oklahoma in 2007-2008 were successful at smacking down the infamous Trans-Texas NAFTA Super-Corridor along I-35. This likely will not happen again.

Such pesky citizens and their state governments will be rendered irrelevant with decisions being made at the national level by a pri­vate board that will operate behind closed doors with little or no public input or recourse. The Brookings Institution explains it this way:

"Multi-jurisdictional projects are neglected in the current federal investment process in surface transportation, due to the insufficient institutional coordination among state and local governments that are the main decision makers in transportation. The NIB would provide a mechanism to catalyze local and state government cooperation and could result in higher rates of return compared to the localized infrastructure projects." (ibid, Brookings Institution)

Thus, where local and state government cooperation is lacking, the NIB would "catalyze" projects and make them happen in spite of such "insufficient institutional coordination".

In short, the NIB scheme sets up the American taxpayer for yet another pil­lage and plunder operation at the hands of the Tri­lat­eral Commission and their global elite cronies. When projects fail, taxpayers will pay for that as well.

S.1926 did not pass in 2008 and H.R. 2521 did not pass in 2009, but now that Obama has put it at the top of his agenda, it will likely pass before December 31, 2010. Or… Obama could simply create it by fiat through an Exec­u­tive Order!

How much more Trilateral abuse can the taxpayer's Treasury endure before the whole economic system in the U.S. just collapses from exhaustion? No one can say for sure, but it seems awfully close to this writer!

Unfortunately, mid-term elections will do absolutely nothing to reduce the influence of this nefarious and unelected group that quietly hijacked the U.S. Executive Branch as far back as 1976 with the election of James Earl Carter and Walter Mondale, both of whom were early members of the Trilateral Commission. That and every administration since then has been stocked full of Commission members, all eager to promote Trilateral-style globalism and demote U.S. sovereignty and prosperity.

Other resources:

CSIS Commission on Public Infrastructure

North America's Corridor Coalition, Inc.

World Bank: Public-Private Partnership in Infrastructure

National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2007 (S.1926

Investing for Success, Brookings Institution

Toward a North American Union, The August Review

-----------------------

Patrick Wood is the editor of The August Review, The August Forecast and is Executive Director of Idaho for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise (Idaho-SAFE).