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September 10, 2005
European Myths about Katrina
Just referring you to an interesting rant over at Asymmetric Information busting some European smugness over how they never would have suffered the Katrina after-affects that we did.
One snippet:
The area that was devastated by the hurricane is approximately the size of Great Britain. Tell me again how the EU would have gotten everything under control in a matter of hours had 90% of England, Scotland, and Wales been flattened by an Atlantic storm that also knocked out electricity to Ireland and France.
and
Of course, Europeans have no way of knowing how they'd do in such a disaster, because they have no storms like Katrina, no earthquakes like Northridge, no rivers like the Mississippi . . . but somehow that doesn't seem to stop some of them from being sure that the ability of their police to stop 40 or so football yobs from rioting translates perfectly into an ability to handle the displacement of 500,000 people when even the police have no water, food, gas for their cars or power for their radios.
It's not great political/economic analysis, but it's a good rant.
Politics by Dan at September 10, 2005 08:25 AM