More meme watch

Wait. How come they don't get to "buck the trend" like we do?

But whether the economy as a whole wins or loses is up for debate. Some analysts are arguing that Sandy could act as a kind of grisly stimulus package, mostly thanks to the billions of dollars that will be spent repairing flood and wind damage. The idea isn't totally out there: unemployment in post-Katrina New Orleans actually fell in the aftermath of the storm. And some academics say that reconstruction after storms in well-prepared areas can boost the economy.

But storms in general, and this one in particular, rarely deliver the kind of stimulus Keynesians are hoping for this week.

One-off catastrophes tend to have a negligible long-term effect on the larger economy, positive or negative, even when there is a tragic human cost. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, while regional unemployment dipped, national GDP growth slowed, if only slightly, says Erwann Michel-Kerjan, co-director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center. Sandy, orders of magnitude smaller, will hardly register on the national radar.