Disaster

After laying waste to the Northern Caribbean and leaving most of bankrupt Puerto Rico without power - perhaps for months - Hurricane Irma, still a category five storm, is expected to make landfall near Miami this weekend. Florida Gov. Rick Scott has already declared a state of emergency, and last night more than 100,000 Miami-Dade residents in Miami Beach and low-lying mainland areas were instructed to leave their homes by Miami Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who issued his first evacuation order.

After laying waste to much of the Leeward Islands and leaving most of Puerto Rico without power, Hurricane Irma is continuing its destructive march through the Caribbean which is expected to culminate with landfall in Miami sometime this weekend.

As we noted yesterday, Irma's catastrophic 185+ mph winds left 90% of the dwellings on the island of Barbuda completely leveled, according to Prime Minister Gaston Browne.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,

Initial jobless claims spiked 62k last week - thanks to a 51k surge in Texas - as the impact of Hurricane Harvey ripples (transitorily) through economic data.

This 26% spike in claims is the largest since 2005 (and biggest absolute rise since 2012).

The 298k print is the highest since April 2015.

Authored by Sarah Burris via RawStory.com,

Hurricane Harvey was a tragic nightmare that hit the Texas shores with force and then lingered for days, dumping truck-loads of rain on a city ill-equipped to handle it. Florida is next, and if predictions are accurate, Hurricane Irma is going to be far worse than Houston was, and worse than anyone has prepared for.