Sandy highlights bank need
from Asia Times:
Sandy highlights bank need
By Ellen Brown
In a shameless display of putting politics before human needs, the US Congress began 2013 still scrapping over a US$60 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill fully nine weeks after the disaster hit. And if the Katrina experience is any indication, the bill may not bring adequate relief to struggling and displaced homeowners even when it is finally passed.
The damage wrought by Sandy to New York and New Jersey coastal areas was similar in scale to that to New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Just two weeks after Katrina hit, Congress approved $62.3 billion in emergency appropriations, along with numerous subsequent emergency funding requests to cover the damages, which topped $100 billion. Yet as noted on the Occupy Sandy Facebook page, federal relief funds post-Katrina were gutted in favor of "privatizing and outsourcing relief, making room for predatory lenders, disaster capitalists, and gentrification developers". (1)
Most people believe they are protected from disaster by their insurance policies or by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). But many Sandy victims have found that their insurance policies included obscure provisions that excluded coverage, depending on such things as whether the disaster was officially classified as a "hurricane" or a "tropical storm," and whether the damage was from "wind" or "flood." And the only aid they have been offered by FEMA, working in partnership with Small Business Administrative Disaster Assistance, is the opportunity to take on more debt. (2) According to a report by Strike Debt:
The vast majority of FEMA's resources and efforts are spent on public assistance grant programs that provide infrastructure restoration. Individual victims of disaster are mostly offered personal loans to help them "get back on their feet." Although these loans might seem good on the surface, they have many features of predatory subprime lending techniques and ultimately make long-term financial burden the precondition for "recovery." (3)
Disaster victims are now being expected to shoulder relief expenses that used to be shared publicly. It is a failing of our austerity-strapped federal disaster relief system that it offers little real help to individuals; and it is a failing of our private, for-profit insurance system that the legal duty of management is to extort as much money as possible from customers while returning as little as possible to them, in order to maximize shareholder profits.
Most Sandy victims are left stranded
The report by Strike Debt was based on observations made at a community meeting in Midland Beach, Staten Island, on November 18, 2012, as well as on interviews with FEMA and Small Business Association (SBA) representatives, volunteer workers, local business owners, and residents throughout New York City. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/OA11Dj01.html
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