Drowning by Numbers: The Non-Reproduction of New Orleans

After the actual hurricane that hit New Orleans in late August 2005, came the second hurricane of neo-liberal looting. The vacuum left by the evacuation of the working class population and the storm’s destruction of infrastructure produced the dream conditions for economic 'restructuring'. This ‘disaster-catalysed primitive accumulation’, argues Benedict Seymour, reveals in fast-forward the fire-fighting strategy of a US economy in chronic decline