People worried about the state of America’s infrastructure haven’t received the House stimulus bill very warmly. After political promises of bold, smart investments in physical assets, a $40 billion allocation for transportation and transit in an $800 billion-plus bill is underwhelming.
The market agrees. Over the past week, as the media and financial world has digested the stimulus bill, the “construction and agriculture machinery” index of stocks has fallen 9.41 percent, while the S&P is up 5.04 percent. Caterpillar shares are skirting their bear-market lows again.
Of course, the point of the stimulus isn’t to raise share prices of capital-equipment firms. (What was the point, again?)
Still, though, the infrastructure world seems to be saying that the stimulus bill has fallen far short of its expectations. It could also be saying that it doesn’t think that infrastructure will get much more than what’s in the bill now.
That’s a bad sign for the prospects for real improvements in bridges, transit, and the like.
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