Outside the Bubble, Public Investment Is Disappearing

These two stories need to get together in a room and talk:

1) Demand for US debt is really high.

2) Government (net) investment is at a 40-year low.

Notice that neither of these facts plays any noticeable role in the policy debates that dominate the US political scene.  There we’re offered a choice of competing visions between radicals who claim that current levels of government spending and investment represent the collapse of free civilization, and conservatives (only, we don’t call them that) who seem to think that we have the share of public investment more or less right (give or take a few dollars for green energy).