In the chaos of the worst natural disaster of our time, the remarkable Houston community provided extraordinary relief for tens of thousands of New Orleans area evacuees and, in so doing, provided a substantial part of the calming effect that steadied jittery economic markets still attempting to stabilize from the effects of Hurricane Katrina.
First, the economic update. As the evacuation of New Orleans picked up steam on Friday, crude-oil and gasoline futures fell sharply as the federal government and the International Energy Agency arranged to release almost 2 million of barrels of oil daily to cover shortages caused by Hurricane Katrina. The short-term supply relief drove benchmark light, sweet crude oil October futures contracts down nearly $2 to $67.57 a barrel on the Nymex Exchange. Earlier posts on the developing economic effects of Katrina over the past week are here, here, here, here and here.
In addition to the drop in crude futures, Nymex gasoline futures for October fell 22.53 cents to finish at $2.1837 a gallon and the October contracts fell another 23 cents in overnight trading to end at $2.2295 a gallon. Also, Nymex heating oil futures for October traded down 10.74 cents to $2.0911 a gallon.

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