Hurricane update

This is from EWR commenting on an earlier post on the hurricane. I thought it was worth pulling it from the comments and putting it here. Thanks EWR.

Heard on Air America yesterday that the start of the 'depression' could be fixed to the date of Hurricane Katrina hitting the Gulf States.

I am in the Atlanta area and we could potentially hit $4.00 a gallon for gas within two weeks -- as our sole source of gas comes from the pipeline that starts from the Gulf States -- which is not operational at the moment. If the pipeline does not come back on line within 8 days -- then our backup reserves here will be gone and the gas stations will be empty.

Bananas -- no not the Gwen Stephani song, but the fruit. Apparently, all of our bananas came into this country at the gulf port that is now shut down. This will become an expensive fruit (will need to be routed to other ports -- like Florida). Steel needed in the northern industrial states will become expensive now -- as barges can not ship up the Mississippi river -- land based transportation from Houston will be used instead (4x the shipping cost). Many other commodities will be more expensive in the short run (oysters, shrimp, etc.). This catastrophe will have a huge economic impact on all the States -- even after ignoring the government's poor handling of the economy.