Engdahl introduces an excellent idea to fund Russia's infrastructure after reviewing the recent history which transferred the control of Russian money from the state to an independent central bank at the instigation of Western ideologists. This independent bank poses a barrier to the construction of badly needed infrastructure development in Russia. His idea provides an end-run around this barrier.
There is a secret about economic infrastructure investment. Unlike various literal “windmill-building” government subsidized projects in today’s EU or USA, construction of necessary economic infrastructure such as high-speed rails–projects that make the arteries of the national and international economy flow faster and more efficiently–such infrastructure projects bring manifold economic gains to the overall economy. This is the long-forgotten “secret” of infrastructure investment discovered in America during the Great Depression when the government issued bonds to build the huge hydroelectric complex in the Government’s Tennessee Valley Authority and other massive infrastructure projects.
Various USA studies from the 1960’s, back when America still invested in its national infrastructure, found that spending on such vital economic infrastructure repays the state in new tax revenues approximately 11 dollars, or in this case rubles, for every dollar or ruble initially invested. That is the secret of well-conceived infrastructure spending.