New Orleans will be shut down for 3 or 4 months. This means NO is dead. People who worked in the city are going to need to get jobs elsewhere, and they most likely won't come back when the city is re-opened. Businesses that were based in NO are going to have to try to relocate. Those that don't go bust won't have the $$$ to relocate back in NO
Unfortunately, you're right. I think NO will be shut down longer than 4 months. But nobody can be without any income for that period of time, especially when whatever savings one has will have to go to some incidentals in rebuilding your own life and home.
Baton Rouge will become the major city in Louisiana. No owner in his right mind would rebuild in Louisiana unless he had an iron-clad guarantee that something like this would never happen again. And that can't be done, given where NO is located.
This is my thought as well. Listening to President Bush tonight, when he spoke of how one day, the city of New Orleans will be "back on its feet," I had the thought that they'd have to implement something like the legislation (the Homesteader Act?) in the 1800's that encouraged people to move west.
And if there's hurricane activity in the Gulf area between now and the time the place is finally rebuilt, well.... it might take a lot of convincing.