Economic boost from NE blackout

Consider the amount of cash changing hands soon to replace ruined food, generators from hardware stores, and contracts to upgrade and improve the electrical grid?

MichaelG

Interesting thoughts.

Changing hands, yes.

Generating new wealth, no.

(Except in the engineering projects, perhaps, but with absolutely no new employment or multiplier effects).

I wonder how much of the initial spend will go into canned food not perishables.

Originally posted by MichaelG
Consider the amount of cash changing hands soon to replace ruined food, generators from hardware stores, and contracts to upgrade and improve the electrical grid?

It will do i think, as long as they dont contract out side of the US to save money, or should that be cut corners?

I agree, it wouldn't particularly create wealth, but "economy" is all about money changing hands. I live near St. Louis and have already heard people discussing the purchase of generators.

Is two days without electricity a fair trade for the resultant cash flow?

MichaelG

What do you think the money has been doing prior to this, and why?

I believe it is important to provide stimulus.

Clearing stock of generators doesn't do it for me.

They are probably ex Carlyle, or Halliburton, or affiliated, I imagine.

J/K.

Oh.generator sales! I know if generator sales skyrocket, there certainly will be a change of money and economic growth for one west coast elf

I still sway to the side of this being a money loss scenario, cash is not being generated its just moving hands so it doesn't really affect the economy...and then we have almost every (99% of) business in NYC shut down, would you care to speculate just how much money they lost?

Bloomingdales/Macys make a couple million a day, magnify that by a few thousand and then we have how much we've lost.
Its not really doing much for investor confidence either, with news appearing that this could be a regular fixture soon.

Consider this, 50 million people affected by this blackout. If 10% of these people spend $100 dollars as a result, that's half a billion dollars changing hands, soon. How many resturants (sic), need to replace $200, $500, a thousand dollars worth of perishables? Discovered their emergency lighting didn't work and have to hire a contractor to correct that?
Even if the major grid work is done by off-shore contractors, it must be physically done on U.S. soil and those workers must spend money at American businesses.
I didn't mean to limit my examples to generators. I could, with some reflection, probably think of may more examples.

Originally posted by Velocity
I still sway to the side of this being a money loss scenario, cash is not being generated its just moving hands so it doesn't really affect the economy...and then we have almost every (99% of) business in NYC shut down, would you care to speculate just how much money they lost?

Bloomingdales/Macys make a couple million a day, magnify that by a few thousand and then we have how much we've lost.
Its not really doing much for investor confidence either, with news appearing that this could be a regular fixture soon.

Cash is generated by the Federal mint. Economy is generated by trade (goods and cash changing hands). I have no idea how much Bloomingdales/Macys makes in a day, and they weren't out of business for a thousand days. And its not how much "we've" lost. I haven't lost a dime, and I'm one of the 200 million people not directly affected by this blackout. They may do that much in business, (goods and cash changing hands), but they didn't spend utility bills and, I suppose, they didn't pay employees.