When Disaster Meets Depression

The recent ice storms have left about 600,000 Kentucky customers without electricity, and the Governor has recently deployed every last National Guardperson. Frankly, we can't help but to think this is another train-wreck-in-slow-motion, and almost certainly a taste of the things to come. We have the feeling that this ice storm will be yet another disaster in a recent long string of mismanaged disasters.

At the same time, Mount Redoubt in the State of Alaska will apparently soon explode. Apparently, Alaska hasn't given us enough entertainment recently, so this will be the latest export of the great north. Pardon our sarcasm, dear Reader; we see only bad things coming from these twin disasters.

These disasters are of a serious nature, as we are sure you realise. However, we seriously question the ability of the States, the Federal government, and the Citizenry to be capable of coping with these, and future, disasters. The 2007 Depression has put the screws onto the financial position of the United States... and disasters are very expensive indeed.

To see how badly disaster areas will be in the future, one need only look at the still-blasted landscape of New Orleans. That city 'enjoyed' the tender mercies of the Army Corps of Engineers... as The New Orleans Levee once sagely noted, the Corps is destroying America, one failed engineering project at a time. This will be the rule, not the exception.