Michael Likosky

Mayor Emanuel's Chicago Infrastructure Trust (CIT) is now law.

Laura and I have prepared an infographic showing how it works.

Much ink has already been spilled on CIT -- its status as the first city-based infrastructure bank in the U.S., multisector scope, commitment by institutional investors...

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo's $16 billion New York Works - blending federal, state and private financing - just passed through the legislature with broad bipartisan support.

Here is an infographic that Laura and I prepared showing how it works:

The first...

Governor Andrew Cuomo recently issued this press release describing his own bipartisan plan with Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to create a multi-sector New York Works Infrastructure Fund.

Governor Cuomo's plan is the most ambitious proposal at the state level to create a...

We speak of labor and business like oil and water.

We too often treat the interests of American workers as necessarily at odds with banks and other private firms. However compelling and often resonant, this storyline neglects the fact that many labor unions today are also pulling together with businesses...

We can expect proposals in the coming weeks aiming for a domestic economic surge, putting Americans back to work. But Americans should be wary of four types of proposals:

1. Ones not designed to kick in before a 2013 inaugural address.
2. Ones not enjoying broad bipartisan support.
3. Ones dramatically increasing public...

America is not the only country now struggling to restructure its public balance sheet. However, we are peculiar in two ways.

First, typically governments in crisis restructure their public sector in exchange for a financial lifeline from a foreign government or international financial institution. For instance, Greece is restructuring...

Both the grand and modest proposals for addressing the debt ceiling are misconceived. Like much of what comes out of Washington these days, it is not particularly inspiring. The idea of shared sacrifice as a public value is fine. However, why should many Americans, who have become accustomed to shouldering...

United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was fond of saying, "leverage is everything." Today, philanthropy is coming to recognize the value of this insight as essential to fulfilling sector-wide shared missions. The leaders of major foundations - Judith Rodin of Rockefeller, Luis Ubinas of Ford, Bill and Melinda...

There's plenty of money eager to find ways of investing in America's resurgence. However, we suffer from a bad case of provocateurship -- we have too many Attention Entrepreneurs who judge an argument's value by whether Fox News, MSNBC, or others looking for waste/fraud/abuse in government or the commercial world...

In the late 1930s, when we faced a double-dip depression, Marriner Eccles, the chairman of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Federal Reserve, worried that our mounting debts and real need for public investment would be hampered by a prevalent sentiment that "unwise spending seems to be spending for the other fellow."...

Fareed Zakaria recently joined a growing group supporting a National Infrastructure Bank. His piece, though, moves the ball forward. Zakaria begins to make the case for Republican and Tea Party support. Let's flesh it out a bit.

Zakaria makes two main arguments:

1. An American Infrastructure Bank would make...

By most accounts, our representatives in Washington will find a way of raising the debt ceiling to avert financial crisis. However, our deficit is not going away anytime soon. We can expect many more rounds of this fight over how we meet out shared sacrifice. We must shift our focus...

President Obama announced an executive order in the Wall Street Journal not long ago to revisit our regulatory agencies to make sure that they promote economic growth and other public values in the areas of safety, health, and the environment. The point was widely misunderstood as an attempt...

Today, a rare thing happened in the United States Senate. A major bill was unveiled aiming to invest in America's infrastructure. It has bipartisan sponsors -- Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). Tom Donohue (President and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce) and...

Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner laid out the case for increasing our financial commitments to the World Bank and its sibling regional development banks. The argument for increasing our commitments is sound, and the commercial case for it essentially four-fold.

First, these development banks constructively reinforce transitions by empowering...

When something goes horribly wrong, it's always useful to look to the Classics to understand what's actually happened and how to move forward. Is our national economy a case in point?

A lot of compelling stories are now circulating about what caused our crisis.

Choose the story that...

President Obama reaffirmed his economic philosophy in the State of the Union address -- a government that works, invests, delivers opportunity, and that we can believe in. It is a lean government, not a big government. It is not a problem, but a problem-solver. The approach that Obama laid out...

Our country faces astounding infrastructure needs. The broken levies of New Orleans, collapsed bridge in Minneapolis, power outages in the Northeast are symptomatic. Nearly every governor and mayor -- Democrat or Republican -- is pressing for more investment.

In a time of budgetary crisis, public officials -- and nearly...

BILLS AND PLANS

Reducing Lead in Drinking Water
S. 3973
Signed into Law
1/4/2011

Bipartisan Co-sponsorship
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)

Support from
American Water Works Association
Association of California Water Agencies
Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies

As we start the New Year, the mainstream press and blogosphere are remarkably consistent in their storyline.

Republicans want a Restoration, a return to a time of limited government, when big businesses and embattled individualists united against unwise spending for the other guy.

After a shellacking, President...