Will This Rising Tide Sink All Boats?

The Mississippi River has flooded before and it no doubt will flood again. But, in the lifetimes of those who live along its shores, it never has and never will flood quite this high. As of now, the river seems to have quit rising in Memphis, Tennessee. It reached a high of 13.84 feet above flood levels Tuesday, its highest levels there since the 1930s. That flood, in 1937, killed 500 people, said Col. Vernie Reichling, the Corps of Engineers Memphis District commander. The flooding in Memphis seems to be under control, as the levee system has held up under duress. "We design these levees for the worst possible case and them we add two to three feet of freeboard. So what you're seeing today is these levees and floodwalls performing as designed," Reichling said. Tennessee is not the endpoint, but rather a temporary destination for the water. It will eventually make its way down to the Gulf of Mexico. This means that the next areas to see high flood waters would include the tornado-ravaged areas of the south, along with Louisiana and Mississippi. Mississippi is bracing for river water levels that may break state records set back in 1927, when a major flood left 600,000 homeless for a while. Louisiana is no stranger to water damage, either, as the state still recovers from the after-effects of major flood damage brought on by Hurricane Katrina. On Monday, President Barack Obama signed a disaster declaration for Tennessee, freeing up federal money toward recovery efforts in areas devastated by storms, tornadoes, and flooding. While that may go toward helping local residents out of the nightmare scenario, there will likely be world-wide consequences from the flood. First, the flooded areas represent some prime farmland in America. In some zones, the water is chest-high amid fields of wheat or corn — two commodities that were already under siege across the globe. If the growing season is wiped out via flood, we might see another spike in food prices, including the price of those two grains, as well as the price of beef and other meats that rely on corn for animal feed. Second, there is a lot of oil refining capacity tied up in the area. Depending on how the levees hold up as the water heads further south, these refineries could be closed down for weeks, if not months, as the water recedes. With oil prices already all over the place, added volatility and uncertainty is probably not a good thing for consumers. Lastly, while it may be a drop in the bucket compared to overall budget concerns, the United States government is still on the hook for the cost of the cleanup and rebuild. Given the debt talk, the concerns over inflation and growth, and the possible negative effects this event could have on the economy, it is entirely possible that this event snowballs into a sort of economic version of Katrina. This is before one even considers the possible loss of life as the waters rise downstream.