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Vol. 71/No. 12      March 26, 2007

 
Letters
 
Hurricane futures
On March 12, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the world’s largest such market, started trading a new commodity: Hurricane Futures! In the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, insurance and energy companies and other businesses saw opportunity in catastrophe. Traders can now bet on where and with what destructive capacity a hurricane will strike. For example, if a trader owned one Hurricane Katrina future worth $1,000 it would have been worth $19,000 two days after the storm.

After Hurricane Mitch ravaged Central America in 1998, the Cuban government sent hundreds of doctors to help. Within the year Cuba began the Latin American School of Medicine to train youth from the region and improve longer-term medical care. It now educates more than 12,000 medical students from all over the world.

In contrast, a year and half after Katrina and Rita, U.S. financiers open another roulette table in their casino.

Willie Cotton,
New York, New York  
 
 
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