This essay on the state of New Orleans in Time Magazine is an unsettling read. Being involved in the life of a municipal government, I recall when I was watching the hurricanes and the floods wondering things like if he ground would not be become saturated with salt or how the tax base would be rebuilt. This fact is bad as well:

The nation's flood-insurance program ran out of money for the first time since its founding in 1968, and some insurers temporarily stopped issuing checks.

The most interesting news for me, however, is that only "60,000 people are spending the night in New Orleans these days, compared with about half a million before Katrina." We North Americans are so mobile these days and our jobs are so interchangeable - maybe much of the population of the city has now effectively moved away in the almost three months since this happened. Should they be enticed back with money or should money be saved by recognizing there will not be a city with that population there again?