As the country undertakes a massive rebuilding effort, CSPAN presents a timely interview with Felix Rohatyn, author of Bold Endeavors, which takes a historical look at ten massive projects that built the U.S. From the Homestead Act to the Interstate Highway, these undertakings were sufficiently controversial in their times to require singular presidential leadership to push them through. And while the long view has led each to be seen as a transformative success, Rohatyn points out the compromises that led to a pattern of the privileged few positioning themselves to benefit disproportionately from the public spending

Q4 magazine similarly explored how current financial trends seemed to have precursors in history.

The potential of sovereign wealth funds to mix politics with finance has many wary of such investment vehicles. Q4 took several looks at SWFs, including a talk with Larry Summers, an insider’s perspective from a leader of one of the larger funds, and an analyst’s take on how the funds have retrenched following the economic crisis. A new paper from Harvard Business School suggests that political involvement with SWF investment strategies does have impacts, though perhaps unexpected ones, such as targeting sectors with higher P/E ratios, and eventually leads to lower returns than SWFs without political involvement. See the paper for details.

These issues have turned out to have interesting echoes as the U.S. is considering becoming a major shareholder in the banks that took TARP funding leading to debates about whether that could lead to too much political interference.