[dpapathanasiou]

I never saw the rationale for the government making risky investments, just because purportedly because nobody else does.

Risk is important because it offers incentives to the marketplace, and prevents economic systems falling into stagnation (local optima), as Aaron Brown describes in this interview: http://marketplacemoney.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/05/...

But I agree with you that it is not the government which should be taking those risks, since (as others have pointed out in this thread), governments really don't know what they're doing in that regard.