<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Sep 1, 2005, at 1:53 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">On Thu, Sep 01, 2005 at 01:03:11PM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote:</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV> <BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">This is surely not the point.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>There are many severe weaknesses in <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">the US economic situation.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>I would give an 80% probability of an <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></DIV> <BR></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I don't know what's going to happen, but if anything Big Bad happens</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">it won't be because of a mere hurricane wreck. It would be but a trigger.</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV><DIV>Charlie Stross has some interesting thoughts about how bad this could be on one of his blogs. It is potentially a bit more than a trigger. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><A href="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2005/08/31/#katrina-1">http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2005/08/31/#katrina-1</A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000DD"></FONT></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16.4px;"><B>Wed, 31 Aug 2005</B></SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;"><B>Katrina aftermath</B></SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">I've avoided posting about the inundation of New Orleans, or Hurricane Katrina, until now -- I'm on the wrong side of the Atlantic and it wasn't obviously any business of mine (other than the odd anxious "are you alright?" email to friends and acquaintances who live a whole lot closer).</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">However: the devastation is now clearly so extensive that I expect it to have very personal consequences indeed.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">Leaving aside any political partisan finger-pointing, it's worth noting that it's not just New Orleans that's underwater. As </SPAN></FONT><A href="http://www.stratfor.com/"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#8D0000">Stratfor</FONT></SPAN></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;"> pointed out in a recent bulletin, New Orleans is just one of the residential hubs of the Port of Southern Louisiana, the huge terminal complex that covers the bottom-most fifty miles of the Mississippi. "The Port of Southern Louisiana is the fifth-largest port in the world in terms of tonnage, and the largest port in the United States. The only global ports larger are Singapore, Rotterdam, Shanghai and Hong Kong. ... The Port of Southern Louisiana stretches up and down the Mississippi River for about 50 miles, running north and south of New Orleans from St. James to St. Charles Parish. It is the key port for the export of grains to the rest of the world -- corn, soybeans, wheat and animal feed. Midwestern farmers and global consumers depend on those exports. The United States imports crude oil, petrochemicals, steel, fertilizers and ores through the port. Fifteen percent of all U.S. exports by value go through the port. Nearly half of the exports go to Europe."</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">The actual estimates for insured structural damage caused by Hurricane Katrina are currently around US $25-30Bn. The current loss of life estimates are in the hundreds (although I'd be unsurprised if the eventual death toll does not eventually top 9/11 by quite a margin). But the economic damage from closing the Port of Southern Louisiana for up to three months is huge -- plausibly equal to 5% of the US balance of trade with the rest of the world. I can't put a figure on that total, but I'd be surprised if it isn't an order of magnitude more than the $25-30Bn insurance costs, and possibly even higher than the cost to date of the Iraq war and occupation ($200Bn). A couple of hundred billion here, a couple of hundred billion there -- pretty soon we're talking real money.</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">What are the likely consequences (locally and globally) of blowing a 5% of GDP sized hole under the waterline of the US economy?</SPAN></FONT></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">(PS: for anyone who suspects this question is prompted by nascent anti-Americanism, rest assured: the </SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;"><I>real</I></SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;"> reason is that I earn about 70% of my income in dollars. If the US economy sneezes, I catch a cold ...)</SPAN></FONT></P><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000DD"></FONT></BODY></HTML>