ortunity to increase their control on the productive sector, proving that indeed, war is the health of the state. Wars have powerful and mostly negative economic effects, arising from loss of production capacity, movement of manpower, reduced foreign exchange earnings and subsequently imports. The United States Civil War Center gave a statistical summary of America’s major Wars (see table 2). The cost of disasters has been said to be very expensive. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reported that damage from hurricanes over the past ten years has been more frequent and costly to American taxpayers than any similar period in recent history. According to FEMA data, a total of 32 Presidential major disasters were declared from 1988 through 1997 for damage from Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes affecting 17 states on the United States mainland, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, and American Samoa and Hawaii in the Pacific. The cost to the nation for these disasters currently stands at more than $5.2 billion in FEMA recovery funding alone. Those figures contrast with the previous ten years when 21 major disasters were declared and $552 million in FEMA assistance was needed to aid recoveries from ten hurricane strikes affecting 12 mainland states, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and American Samoa. FEMA figures also show that the 1988-1997 period spawned several of the most intense hurricanes in recent history, led by Hurricane Andrew’s assault on South Florida and parts of Louisiana in 1992. A recent article on the Internet titled, “ Attack on America”, reported that the Federal Reserve to push a key interest rate to its lowest level in four decades in an effort to get consumers spending again. In the midst of the terrorist attacks, consumer confidence has plunged by a large amount, which is a threatening development given that consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of total...
