You heard it here first (that was sarcasm). The midwest floods will be :
- Larger in scope and cost than Katrina. Silly phrases like the midwest Katrina will make no sense when the true scope is realized. Wait five years to see what this current situation costs.
- The nature of the flooding will lengthen the time of the disaster allowing for spectacular images. This will allow for an anti-war effort you haven’t seen in quite awhile.
- The river states are going to be hurting for national guard troops. Where are they at? Midwestern states have the highest mobilization rate. The iconic images of police officers pulling guns on residents will haunt Iowan law enforcement.
- FEMA hasn’t dropped it’s pants, but inter-agency squabbling is right around the corner when recovery starts.
- Enough supply of corn has gone under that ethanol production will be in danger, and food prices will sky rocket. Nobody has even linked that to fuel prices yet.
- During the Red River floods of 1993 North Dakota, South Dakota, and the other river states lost huge chunks of farmland, and the river receded, but the flood waters didn’t. Ground went fallow in the winter unplanted for years.
- The electric, telephone, water supply, and other utility infrastructures are gone. That means huge cost to repair if it ever will be. Think New Orleans where it is still in disrepair.
- Mortgage crisis, flood, watch the stock market bottom out next week or when the bill comes in. Parasitic drag on the economy.
These are my prognostications and I’m sticking to them. I think much like Katrina the reality of the impacts of the flood will not truly be known for a few years. Where the destruction in New Orleans was metropolitan in nature and centralized the midwest floods will be over a large (relatively) unpopulated area through the middle of America. The difference continues. The region that has been hit is the bread basket, the engine of food production, for the United States economy. Added to that the fact Indiana and Illinois already had cool wet springs with late plantings and the scope of the food/ethanol/export issues start to be illuminated.
The midwest largely ignored by the cosmopolitan coastal regions of the United States and relatively ignored by pundits as irrelevant the backbone of America will take some time to straighten out. The relief efforts are substantially better orchestrated than New Orleans.
