Only the people can pay for anything. We pay both as workers and as consumers. The delusion that "the company" or "the government" is paying for things is the root cause of most bad economic policy. The people pay for it all, and each place where that is hidden or delayed is another place where costs increase and graft can take place. When a company appears to be paying for something, what it is actually doing is employing fewer people than the market would justify, and not servicing its market properly: unemployment, shortages and neglect of preventive maintenance. Any cost a company cannot pass on to its customer is paid for repeatedly in jobs both present and future.

Your nation's problems can only be solved with your own resources and labor. You have plenty of each. Foreign money mostly helps you employ foreign labor. Get your economic thinking mostly aimed at the domestic market, and less on export. You can be a very rich nation.

It is perfectly true that most other nations have played these games with money, too. The current financial meltdown is the long term result of some of these in the lending market. If the richer nations had been paying full price for energy, they would now be entirely solar powered. Anything that stands between the people and the real cost of the goods and services they need is a disservice to the people in the long run.