Reader Comment Of The Week

Industrial Reconstruction Finance
INDIREFI


The crisis of U.S. Manufacturing transcends any current set of economic conditions.
The crisis effects and is effected by the currency, energy, and housing crises. The role of U.S. manufacturing is pivotal in solutions to energy and housing, because the dearth of manufacturing has exacerbated both housing and energy. When U.S. industrial might led the way in WWII, industry pulled the U.S. from
Depression and made half of the materials and weapons needed in the War effort for all Allies. A crisis of equal gravity is at hand, and an effort to match the gravity of the crisis is needed. Nothing proposed here is any more dangerous than the construction of the Canals of the Washington Administration.

The solution is the reconstruction of the U.S. industrial base. The starting point must be basic industries then move outwatd. The plight of automobile industry is grave enough to warrant help even without externalization of auto industry crisis. Externalization of the automotive crisis effects other industries, the environment, the dollar, and economic recovery and trade. We cannot put metal in the ground for wind turbines or drilling pipe when there is no metal to buy. The siren song of the supply chain is over when supply of commodities are short, expensive, and both import prices and trade debt are so high.

Needed for the auto crisis is a U.S. authority with the capacity and deep pockets to turn around domestic production. Turn-around will focus on manufacture of auto,steel,chips and other domestic plants, American and foreign owned. The objective is to provide bridge financing for a distraught industry. The bridge financing authority will seek take-out substation of the loans made by private capital after the factory floor and plant capacity is built and ready, most likely a 2 to 3 year window.



A carefully planned first year budget should be less than the original cost of the Marshal Plan ($45Billion). Net cost to the taxpayer is planned to be zero.
A prime objective is to protect taxpayer funds and recycle loan money in the window. The authority will help in of the early production for federal, state and local government fleets. Without Reconstruction, the goal of creating fuel fleets may exceed ten years.

The Reconstruction will target factory and movable shop floor capacity for a range of new technology, fuel efficient vehicles. Such vehicles will include the plug-in hybrids, conventional hybrids, fuel-cell vehicles, very high mileage conventional vehicles, natural gas and methanol vehicles and other new technologies still to come.
Tiers of the reconstruction are ordered by critical path. Reconstruction as a whole, is the critical path out of the recession, manufacturing and energy crises.
Some tiers of the plan may start early but all tiers have critical paths in earlier tiers.
Each of the industries in question are short of capital except for the funding of polymer lithium ion batteries. That is where help at a national level comes in.

Phases of INDIREFI Reconstruction

· First Tier - basic auto component industries - specialty steel, generic microprocessors, copper, aluminum

· Second Tier – fortify and build capacity of Polymer Lithium Batteries, direct solar, wind turbines, specialty steel tubing (oil drilling), and custom microprocessors

· Third Tier – increase cement and non specialty steel capacity
for highway construction and railroad rolling stock and rail and airport runway and management systems

· Fourth Tier – auto shop floor capacity and automation for building
next generation automobiles, local financing to utilities for wind turbines, nuclear power, land fill methane, small hydro, co-generation

· Fifth Tier – nanosolar fabrication capacity, next generation wind turbines, advanced vehicle designs and identifiable cutting edge technologies entering production stage but short of capital