EVENTS COVERAGE

Coronavirus in US to 'Make America great again'?: Kaiser

Spending on infrastructure could be government response

Michael Quinn in Toronto
 Image: Gage Skidmore, Peoria, AZ

Image: Gage Skidmore, Peoria, AZ

John Kaiser, an independent analyst covering the North American junior resources sector for nearly three decades, said economic disruption in the US could create a "crisis window" to fix what he sees is the real problem in America.

"And that problem has been the absence of a story as to what will keep America great or, even better, make it greater," Kaiser said at the Metals Investment Forum in Toronto on the eve of PDAC.

"When they did that big corporate tax reform, and all that money came back, it was supposed to go into rebuilding America, rebuilding productive capacity.

"It didn't happen.

"It went into the market because the business community does not have a vision of where America is going.

"The response to (the crisis could see) the keeping of the one promise that Trump has pretty much ignored and that is infrastructure renewal.

"And once they get serious about rebuilding America's infrastructure that will send a signal to the business community … (and) the world that America is growing bigger, it's not going to forfeit its leadership role, and it will perhaps get the American population out of its feuding funk that it's in right now and get out of its ‘end times' mentality." 

Kaiser concedes the political and economic challenges of a big infrastructure spend given it'll require further debt expansion.

"But with rates going to go down near zero, what is the future interest rate cost of any debt raised to build America?"

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