Bernard Hickey tells us what's wrong

[harm_less]

at one point it was standard economic theory to spend up on infrastructure projects when the economy is flatlining.  That's how we got a lot of our larger infrastructure projects funded in the past.  Why is it any different now?

Ingrained from the economic philosophies of the 1990s (where that strategy was abused) from Bernard's spiel. The increase in risk aversion in many aspects of life now won't be helping in that regard either.