An article in the Business Insider explains that at least one investment firm believes that it’s time to invest in the discounted property along the Gulf. The investment group, Broyhill Asset Management, is pushing an investment in the St. Joe Company. Broyhill has a 31 page presentation extolling the virtues of this company and its current holdings along the gulf coast.

But this will just be the first of a flood of companies that will move in on the real estate bonanza that the gulf coast will become.

Naomi Klein explained in The Shock Doctrine how disasters can be made to profit economic elites. Here is a developing project. First, there will be requests for “tax free development zones.” Then there will be actual grants of federal, state, county and city money to encourage development. The properties along hundreds of miles of coastline devastated and devalued by the oil spill can be bought up for a song. And a happy tune it will be, as thousands of businesses escape paying taxes to support roads, schools, etc. and roam to the gulf where cheap land, no taxes and a subservient government desperate for jobs will do virtually anything to make them happy.

But think about the other possibilities. You can get the government to guarantee loans, waive wage and hour laws, postpone or do without environmental impact studies, and the list of goodies a company can get goes on and on.

And during all this, the people whose livelihoods and homes were destroyed or devalued will simply be setup for the chopping block. The government that should have protected them and aided them will be a conscious, skillful, relentless aid to the companies buying them out and replacing them.

Well, the vultures are circling. They are expecting meat on the table and plenty of it.

James Pilant

P.S. I want to thank Sue White who brought this to my attention. jp