Total Cost = 94(!) Hurricane Katrina’s The coronavirus crisis has cost the United States at least $16 trillion in terms of lost lives, lost quality of life, and lost economic activity. –Amitabh Chandra, Harvard health economist; quoted in The New York Times (11/14/2020). Just how big a wallop is the pandemic? It may be years...Read More
Are Natural Disasters Partisan? Every time the wire services publish a photo of President Obama comforting a victim of Hurricane Sandy, it’s hard to imagine jaded citizens (and potential voters) not being touched, at least a little bit (and no, I’m not attaching political motives to Obama’s humanitarian actions). In fact, a broader principle seems to be...Read More
Pop quiz: the consensus among mortgage lenders is that Hurricane Sandy will have the following effect on mortgage rates: A. Up. B. Down. C. No change. Answer: C. That opinion seems to be based on two factors: 1) Hurricane Katrina’s negligible effect on interest rates in 2005; 2) the Fed’s commitment to keep rates low...Read More
