Investment matters

It is too early to tell how much damage Hurricane Katrina will do to US GDP. But the chaos that followed the storm has already damaged the credibility of the US economic record. Leave aside the immediate failures of social solidarity and of government emergency management. Those are certainly alarming, but they are not exactly economic issues. Two other post-Katrina problems suggest that the US has allowed its capital stock to run down. The flooding of New Orleans could have been avoided, or a...