(GLOBALINTELHUB.COM) — 9/9/2017 As Hurricane Irma approaches US borders, investors should note the forces of the ‘invisible hand’ in nature and not only in markets. As we explain in our groundbreaking work Splitting Pennies, the financial markets are not ‘as seen on TV’ and in fact, are the subject of constant manipulation, and this storm is no exception.
With just hours left until landfall, sometime on Sunday morning, Hurricane Irma is edging ever closer to Florida and has started to batter the state with Hurricane force winds as millions brace for the impact of the most powerful Atlantic storm in a decade.
According to ABC and AP, the National Weather Service measured a 74-mph gust in the Florida Keys on Saturday night, marking the beginning of hurricane-force winds that forecasters say will steadily intensify in the coming hours.
This weekend Hurricane Irma is set to unleash hell over Florida, resulting in devastation and damages worth tens of billions of dollars... and many hedge funds are on the hook ahead of their own coming balance sheet "catastrophe."
Last week, before the full devastation from Hurricane Harvey was unveiled, Goldman and JPM were the first banks to suggest that the storm's impact on US GDP would be modest: a slight decline in Q3 growth, offset by a similary modest rebound in Q4 and further as emergency funds "trickled down" through the economy.
After "carving a path of destruction through the Caribbean," a path which left 90% of Barbuda "uninhabitable" and nearly a million people without power in Puerto Rico, a slightly weakened, but still devastatingly massive Category-4 Hurricane Irma is closing in on Florida. Here is the latest from the National Hurricane Center: