All the world is a market. posted by Richard Seymour

Bush's allies have not been slow to nab some of that $51.8bn reconstruction money authorised by Congress:

Companies with ties to the White House and the former head of FEMA have clinched some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group and the other is Halliburton-subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR). Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

Bechtel National, a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp, has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane.

...

Halliburton alone has earned more than $US9 billion. Pentagon audits released by Democrats in June showed $US1.03 billion in "questioned" costs and $422 million in "unsupported" costs for Halliburton's work in Iraq.

And the mere anticipation of grabbing some of that reconstruction cash has Caterpillar rising beneath the sheets, while Halliburton, tangled in the same nest, is seeing its share price soar like some predatorial bird.

Those same companies are saying they can't continue reconstruction in Iraq because they've run out of money. How long before Halliburton, after blowing millions on "unsupported costs", bleats that even with government-approved low wages they still can't afford to continue without another hot injection of taxpayers' money?

Meanwhile, FEMA, in all its virtue and magnanimity, has announced that it has spent $669 million on aid for households affected by the hurricane. They have registered 573,262 households, which means that each household is getting $1,167 for their troubles. Yet some are 'worried' that New Orleans will have to be reinvented, and that many of the poor, black residents of New Orleans will not want to return now that they have found car boots to live out of and jobs at Taco Bell to sustain them.