This discussion was better than I was expecting.
https://twitter.com/jainfamilyinst/status/1395380307185094664
The key takeaway for me is that National Investment Authority-type proposals combine two logically distinct elements. They are supposed to be *lenders* that will direct public finance to private projects. And they are *borrowers* that will create new assets for financial markets.
In my mind the first function makes sense and worth pursuing. The second is fundamentally misguided. The financing problem for the public sector has already been solved, we don't need to create a new form of public liabilities to finance decarbonization.
And if the goal is to limit various kinds of destructive finance - which I full share - you need to do that directly through regulation. Creating new competing public won't help. It might even hurt - safe public assets and risky private ones are complements, not substitutes.
But @STOmarova's point about the need for central coordination of climate investment is well taken, and insofar as an NIA-type body plays that role - financially downstream from the federal government, upstream from private businesses - I think it's very worth pursuing.
What we don't need is a conception of "mobilizing financial capital" that means offering some new product for owners of financial assets. The ambiguity of the word "capital" is consequential here!
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