o “essential material needs” (2010: 4), thereby sheltering policymakers from the public scrutiny associated with sweeping economic reform policies like privatizations, capital liberalization, and cuts in long-term government spending. Disasters create a shock in the public realm, a kind of disorientation where policy space is made available and must be acted upon immediately before the public regains their collective clarity and sense of normalcy.

Hurricane Katrina proved to be a watershed moment in the conceptualisation of Klein’s “disaster capitalism complex.”

Katrina was a category 4 storm, surging over 6 metres in height that made its landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. It is estimated to have impacted approximately 90,000 square miles throughout southern Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, displaced between 1-1.5 million people (with nearly half of those coming from New Orleans), killed more than 1,800 people, and exceeded $80 billion in costs (Button and Oliver-Smith 2008:123; Cutter et al. 2006:8; Elliot and Pais 2006:302). The handling of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts by the Bush government was dubbed an administrative failure over the years (Eikenberry, Arroyave, Cooper 2007: 160; Dreier 2006) However, his administration was cunning enough to use the catastrophe for financial gain, in one of the most blatant instances of disaster capitalism in recent years. In the aftermath of the disaster, the administration sought to remove tax breaks for small business, lodge suggestions that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forgo environmental statutes such as the Clean Air Act, waive preconditions of affirmative action for contractors, and lift the cap on the number of work hours for truck drivers (Dreier 2006). Bush’s government, buoyed by Republican congressmen also pursued $50 billion in cuts of public expenditure on social services for the poor such as Medicaid, child care, food stamps and Supplemental Security Income (Dreier 2006). It rescinded rules capping the number of hours truckers can work. Firms and corporations with linkages to the government were added no-bid contracts for the rebuilding and reconstruction work. Firms and large corporations with political connections reaped big. Halliburton earned $ 124.9 million from contracts with the Department of Defence, FEMA, the US Navy and Army Corps of Engineers (Halliburton Watch 2005; Adams, Hattum and English 2009: 629). This was despite the fact that Halliburton botched its performance in Iraq and underwent 20 investigations for purported crimes such as bribery, vote rigging, overcharging (Adams, Hattum and English 2009: 629). However, the firm’s close relationship with the Bush administration played strongly to their advantage. The U.S construction industry furnished the R