S&P 500
7,615.40
-0.09%
Dow Jones
51,327.00
-0.09%
Nasdaq 100
30,644.80
-0.23%
Russell 2000
2,928.08
-0.17%
FTSE 100
10,381.30
-0.06%
Nikkei 225
68,144.20
+0.95%

Investing

What Does It Cost? $6 Billion, What The Mississippi Basin Flooding Costs The Economy.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Invalid Image
What is the cost of the current flooding of the Mississippi basin? According to Michael J. Hicks, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University in a recent NYT article, the damages from Memphis down to the Gulf range from between $6 and $9 billion. The flood is the worst the area has experienced since 1927. In some places, such as Lasalle Parish in Louisiana, river levels are the highest they’ve ever been, yet levee systems have prevented flooding from being as bad. If it were not for modern flood management systems such as the Morganza Spillway, water levels would be even higher in many areas. Regardless, the effects of the recent flooding have been economically devastating for many.

Already, between 2.1 million and 2.2 million acres in the delta region have been affected. This accounts for approximately 1 percent of all cropland in the US. The effects of the flooding expand even further than this, however. Barge shipping has been disrupted, unemployment is rampant in the area, and tourism is suffering. This is made worse by the fact that many of these areas are already suffering economically. Mississippi has the largest percentage of its population living below the poverty line compared to all of the other states and already has an unemployment rate of 10.2 percent, significantly higher than the national average of 8.7%. Many parts of Louisiana’s economy have just recently recovered from BP oil spill. Although it is unclear if the flooding in these states will get worse at this point, extensive damage to homes and businesses has already been done.

Charles B. Stockdale

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google
Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Continue Reading

Douglas A. McIntyre |

Unemployment Insurance Buckles After Years of Underfunding

by Olga Pierce, ProPublica Half a million Americans lost their jobs in April, meaning there are now officially 14 million…

Douglas A. McIntyre |

Ten Signs The Double-Dip Recession Has Begun

Today’s news on GDP shows the double dip has arrived–an expansion of only 1.3% and consumer spending up .1% in…

Alberto Damage Estimated at $800 Million as It Moves in Gulf of Mexico
Douglas A. McIntyre |

Alberto Damage Estimated at $800 Million as It Moves in Gulf of Mexico

One of the parts of the storm analysis system which is often overlooked is economic models. As tropical storm Alberto…

Countries Where Climate Change Is Most Evident
247patrick |

Countries Where Climate Change Is Most Evident

Climate change is affecting the entire world, but not all countries are affected equally. Each year, Germanwatch, an environmental organization…

America’s Worst and Costliest Natural Disasters Happened Under These Presidents
David Beren |

America’s Worst and Costliest Natural Disasters Happened Under These Presidents

Unfortunately, one of the things we cannot control in the United States is the weather. For better or worse, the…

Countries That Suffer the Most From Extreme Weather Events
Steven M. Peters |

Countries That Suffer the Most From Extreme Weather Events

For the past 14 years, Germanwatch, an independent development and environmental organization that advocates for sustainable development, has ranked countries…

7 States With the Most Dangerous Weather
Sam Stebbins |

7 States With the Most Dangerous Weather

Nearly 3,000 people have been killed in the United States in the last five years because of weather-related events and…

Douglas A. McIntyre |

Nine Signs That a New Global Recession Has Arrived

Economists and policy makers in large countries and organizations like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have expressed concern…

Floods Are Most Likely to Destroy Your Home in These Cities
Douglas A. McIntyre |

Floods Are Most Likely to Destroy Your Home in These Cities

As the coldest areas in and near the Arctic circle and Antarctica melt, sea levels continue to rise. Scientists have…

Top Gaining Stocks

Hewlett Packard Enterprise
HPE • Vol: 153,197,465
Enphase Energy
ENPH • Vol: 8,360,053
Corning
GLW • Vol: 18,152,646
Alexandria Real Estate Equities
ARE • Vol: 4,337,015
Aptiv
APTV • Vol: 6,761,325

Top Losing Stocks

Trade Desk
TTD • Vol: 21,905,513
Intuit
INTU • Vol: 7,383,018
Coterra Energy
CTRA • Vol: 73,319,495
Cboe Global Markets
CBOE • Vol: 5,000,011
HP
HPQ • Vol: 29,259,826