One frightening opening sentence from The Washington Post: In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico,
“„In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day.
“„The national statistics need one more month to be disaggregated in sufficient depth to estimate job losses from the BP spill and from the Obama moratorium. Business condition reports compiled by the Atlanta and Dallas Fed regional banks will begin to discuss the economic pain in tourism, fisheries, and oil service industries. We expect this to make for continued unpleasant reading. If the Obama moratorium holds in its present form, we expect a million more job losses over the next few years to “pile on” the job losses to date. This is in addition to those originating in the loss of fisheries and tourism. Obama may be destined to run for re-election in 2012 with a broadly computed (U-6) unemployment rate of 18-20 percent….
“„On July 4, one-third of America’s GOM is closed to fishing. NOAA’s jurisdiction stops at the federal boundary. Thus, Mexico, Cuba or international treaty enforcement determines fishing prohibitions in the non-U.S. Gulf. The Sarasota fishmonger on Lemon St. now gets his shrimp from Sanibel. “Louisiana is dead for years,” he said. “It will not come back in my lifetime.”