The Toxic Book Cooking Legacy of Private Finance Initiatives

On today’s episode of Double Down, hosts Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert are joined by Joel Benjamin of Debt Resistance UK to discuss the shoddy and unsafe schools in Scotland built under a wacky scheme called Private Finance Initiatives (PFI). Who will foot the bill?

The wacky idea proposed by Private Finance Initiatives was that we could magically offload risk onto the private sector for all our vital public services like schools, hospitals, transport and more… and save money doing so! With the government being paid to borrow, however, the notion that we could save money has turned out to be pure fantasy. Double Down asks Joel Benjamin to explain the dodgy history of how PFI provided New Labour with a bridge to the City of London, which has been paid back many times over via lucrative offshore harboured PFI contracts which have been ‘flipped’ many times for great profit.