my #WallStreetConsensus paper: escorting financial capital to SDG in Global South via (a) structural transformation of local financial systems and (b) state derisking PPP-based SDG assets (for demand, political, climate & liquidity risks)
on the empirical side, paper explores the new World Bank Infrastructure Sector Assessment Programs
(InfraSAPs) for Egypt, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Vietnam to document proposed engineering of 'developmental/SDG assets'
World Bank sees the COVID pandemic as a strategic opportunity for PPP-led infrastructure recovery plans, and is mobilising PPP offices in Global South for it
problem is that infrastructure PPPs around the world have been hit by demand risk, as you cannot charge user fees in lockdown.
WB answer: more derisking state, more infrastructure as an asset class, more #WallStreetConsensus
👀👀👀👀
#WallStreetConsensus flourishing in Brazil, pandemic be damned: highway PPP project signed in May 2020, financed by Singapore Sovereign Wealth Fund and Patria Investments (partly owned by Blackstone)
the largest PPP in Cameron, the Nachtigal Hydro Power Company - a great example of Maximising Finance for Development - has a legal contract of 141 pages.
and here is a distribution of risks, with the Government of Cameron (GoC) ticking a lot of boxes - the derisking state in action
and the World Bank's new Next Generation Africa Climate Business Plan (July 2020) hardwires #WallStreetConsensus logic via Maximising Finance for Development + Green and Resilient Infrastructure
this Afghanistan PPP will make for an interesting case study of derisking a World Bank promoted PPP
turns out what we really need to get trillions for public investment in SDGs is not elaborate financial engineering under #WallStreetConsensus, but euthanasia of the high-net worth individuals, via proper taxation regimes
in case you believed that COVID19 at least will give us better funded public health systems, think again: PPP practitioners around the world identify health as the most promising area post-pandemic
the environmental politics of the #WallStreetConsensus is to tie the hands of governments in the Global South either directly (environmental regulation = political risk) or indirectly (compensate PPP operators for new rules)
guess which continent is sinking more fiscal resources in guaranteeing profits for private energy sector: Africa.
And private sector there means European and US companies. #CompactWithAfrica
oh look, WB's COVID19 response is a rhapsody to PPPs h/t @ma_jose_romero
in #WallStreetConsensus language games: feminist PPP electrification 'ensures that women and men are equal participants in the new power systems that are established through the arrival of microgrids'
nothing on users fees in this promotional material
what Earthsparks means by derisking renewable energy is exactly what the World Bank's Maximising Finance for Development proposes - the derisking state
oh hello Wall Street Climate Consensus in Europe - didnt take long for World Bank to push PPP agenda in European Green Deal cc @nickshaxson@ma_jose_romero
Fernandez government in Argentina just rescinded two PPP contracts signed by Macri govt, documenting several irregularities through which private sector was milking public purse.
#WallStreetConsensus & its failure to mobilise trillions in @FT
4 things missing:
a) hegemonic dominance of 'mobilising private finance' in development/climate
b) asking why hegemony
c) mushrooming scaling up initiatives
d) do we want success?
a) Mobilising private finance remains global game - (Bridgetown, Biodiversity COP16, 4th Financing for Development conf) & national game (UK Labour gov, Brazil/Colombia/Chile decarbonisation).
*The world's most powerful political narrative that doesnt deliver
b) hegemonic not (just) because Big Finance is powerful, but postneoliberal, transformative state cant get rid of neoliberal macro - independent central bank dominating fiscal.
without macroinstitutional change- How do we pay for transformation- only one answer: private finance
when Big Finance occupies the state and takes over the social contract, nurses struggle, grandparents struggle, parents struggle, renters struggle, private equity flourishes.
no punches pulled on the Commission's Net Zero Industrial Act, the 2022 attempt to respond to Biden's Inflation Reduction Act with a lot of derisking talk but no money (ahem, European Sovereignty Fund)
Climate policy is industrial policy, and the other way around.
An important reminder that EU's climate policy was once ambitious, state-driven decarbonisation.
the Clean Energy Finance Authority would subsidize foreign demand for US cleantech - or derisk BlackRock renewable assets in say, Kenya with subsidies/guarantees.
nothing in this proposal from a top Kamala Harris advisor suggests US should enable technology transfers to countries wishing to pursue their own domestic cleantech capabilities.
in #WallStreetConsensus, Global South are consumers of American cleantech, with American dollars.
Two amazing Global South progressives and a Nobel prize winner walk into an Oxfam panel on post-neoliberalism
Stiglitz: w neoliberalism, the growth of financial markets changed the political game tremendously
Lula 's special advisor @AAbdenur - clear mismatch - Global North openly exposing industrial policy but pushing IMF/World Bank to continue with austerity and partnerships for hyper-financialisation
missing from this @FT account of the rapid rise of infrastructure as an asset class is the sustained effort that G20 governments have put into derisking infrastructure assets for institutional capital - this is the derisking state in action #WallStreetConsensus
@FT with @BJMbraun we've termed this a weak derisking macrofinancial regime - a set of policies (as in the G20 Infrastructure as an Asset Class agenda, or World Bank Maximising Finance for Development) that seeks to mobilise private capital into infrastructure osf.io/preprints/soca…
BlackRock 's recent acquisition of GIP is a bet that governments - under ideological or real constraints on fiscal space - will not pursue public infrastrucuture projects but instead continue to derisk private capital