Why We Need a National Investment Authority

Abstract

This brief memorandum lays out the case for a National Investment Authority (NIA): a permanent federal instrumentality tasked with devising and implementing a long-term national strategy of economic and infrastructural development. The memorandum emphasizes the proposed NIA’s potential to provide an indispensable—and presently lacking—institutional platform for effective coordination of the nation’s response to systemic crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. It outlines how the NIA would:

(1) coordinate nationwide production mobilization efforts,

(2) execute emergency financial relief and corporate bailout measures, and

(3) manage public stakes in bailed-out private firms (through a novel “golden share” regime)—and do so in a transparent, democratically accountable, and distributionally just manner.

Keywords: COVID, Coronavirus, financial crisis, bailout, emergency relief, NIA, RFC, economic mobilization, golden share, public stake, public equity, industrial policy, Green New Deal, public infrastructure finance, crisis response, crisis coordination

JEL Classification: H10, H12, H13, K10, K23, L50, L52, O10, O16, O20, O23, O25