Floods, Power Cuts Hit New York as Sandy Slams into Eastern US
The building is known as one of the priciest ever in New York. A six-bedroom penthouse at the building is under contract for a reported $90 million. The building recently made headlines for tax breaks from a program aimed at low-income housing.
(Read More: Billionaires Get 'Low-Income' Tax Breaks in Condo Tower)
According to the New York Mayor's Office, emergency services were receiving 10,000 calls per half hour as of late Monday night, prompting authorities to urge citizens to only call 911 for life-threatening emergencies.
Stock Markets Shut
U.S. stock markets were to remain closed to Tuesday in the first weather-related closure for the markets in 27 years. Stock exchange operator NYSE Euronext said markets would re-open on Wednesday "conditions permitting."
NYSE Euronext said it was making contingency plans in case of irreparable damage to New York City facilities.
"We stress that, as of now, there has been no damage to the NYSE Euronext NYC
headquarters that would impair trading floor operations. The following plan is precautionary only given the unpredictability of the storm's impact at this time," it said in a statement.
(Read More: The NYSE Mulls the Reopening)
he federal government in Washington was closed and schools were shut up and down the East Coast.
U.S oil prices slipped to just above $85 a barrel on Tuesday, as Sandy shut East Coast refineries, roads and airports, reducing crude and fuel demand in the world's largest oil consumer.
"With refineries cutting runs, we're likely to see a build-up in crude stocks which could be driving bearish prices at the moment," said Michael Creed, an economist at National Australia Bank in Melbourne.
Economic Fallout
One disaster forecasting company predicted economic losses could ultimately reach $20 billion, only half insured. Most Wall Street analysts have been expecting insured losses of around $5 billion, which they say the industry could easily handle.
"You will see a much higher financial impact when you put everything together. Flooding incidents have a very high impact and financial consequences, and most of them are under-insured so it could turn out to be one of the largest dollar disasters in U.S. history," said Harrald at Virginia Tech.
Peter Schiff, CEO and president of Euro Pacific Capital, agreed the fallout from the storm could be negative for the economy.
"Natural disasters are always bad, there are these Keynesian economists that try to make the argument that it's good because it creates jobs," he told CNBC. "You don't create jobs you displace jobs, you force an economy to have to expense scarce resources, repairing what was damaged, replacing what was lost, those things are done at the expense of other things we could have created if we weren't forced to do that.
Others said it was too early to judge the economic implications.
"At this point, we don't actually know what kind of damage Sandy is going to bring in, whether the estimates are going to live up. When (Hurricane) Irene was moving in last year, there were expectations of much larger damages and much larger impact than actually ended up being the case," Matt Koppenheffer, senior banking analystof Motley Fool, told CNBC.
