Here's an idea: since Ben Bernanke is sending $45 billion per month to Wall Street (through QE infinity), Cuomo should just ask Ben to stop giving one month's worth to Wall Street and instead give it to him for NY's Sandy relief. Problem solved! That was easy.

a colleague of mine ran into a guy that's hauling all of the water-damaged cars to the far end of Long Island and dropping them there for indefinite storage. He said they'll store 200,000 damaged cars there. Yes, that is not a typo: 200,000 cars. Ignoring the environmental impact of all these rusting "Sandy Cars" leaking fluids into the ground, all those cars will be replaced with insurance money. That's a huge boom to the auto-industry.

@Tom:

NY gets back about $0.79 for every dollar it sends to the federal gov't in federal tax dollars. New Jersey does even worse by the way getting back only about 61 cents per dollar spent.

It's about time these 2 states get back more of their fair share.

Plus if you want to talk about "paying for your own mess" let's talk about factors going into climate change and tax them for disaster mitigation at the source, starting with Alberta Tar Sands...

Setup for the "Environmental Cliff"

(except that sadly we can't print more environment)

The greedy numbers coming from C&C are astounding. What will it be next week, 50 billion for New York? Last I checked NYC was the Finance Center of the World... not the bayou. Pay for your own mess.