ABSTRACT
The US is the obvious final market for private capital to make its mark in infrastructure, representing the last and biggest bastion to embrace public-private-partnerships. The US political system simply would not tolerate change because the very same public employees who benefited also had sway via their unions over politicians and hence significant control over negotiating their own pensions. Public debt financing in the US is much more of a relationship business and depends on the ability of politicians to squeeze taxation revenues from their voter base which can be securitized. One of the best arguments for a National Infrastructure Bank is that there is no one existing institution that has the ingredients for success in the US infrastructure space. With the re-emergence of the National Infrastructure Bank as American Infrastructure Finance Authority (AIFA), Washington appears decided for once to concentrate on something that the market can't easily supply: project finance debt, commercial bank style.
