It is unfortunate that he uses the Alaska purchase as the benchmark for shrewd public investment as there is some thought that maybe it wasn't, see: http://bit.

It is unfortunate that he uses the Alaska purchase as the benchmark for shrewd public investment as there is some thought that maybe it wasn't, see: http://bit.ly/d3WsHn  http://bit.ly/d3WsHn  The purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, ridiculed in 1867 as “Seward’s Folly,” is now viewed as a shrewd business deal. A purely financial analysis of the transaction, however, shows that the price was greater than the net present value of cash flow from Alaska to the federal government from 1867 to 2007.