Recorded August 30, 2019

Don't miss my upcoming appearances:

The Las Vegas Trading Conference, Oct. 4-5

The Dallas Money Show October 13-14

and the New Orleans Investment Conference, Nov. 1-4

Waiting for Hurricane Dorian

When I recorded my last podcast on Tuesday evening, we were getting ready for Hurricane Dorian, which was supposed to pass by the south coast 0f Puerto Rico on Wednesday.  But when I woke up on Wednesday morning, the meteorologists had the hurricane pretty much coming right over my house. It had changed course and had moved north, and it was supposed to come right through Puerto Rico, rather than just go by it to the South. But then the hurricane kept moving north, and it ended up missing Puerto Rico completely.  We were here, the kids were home from school, everybody was battened down waiting for what at that time was maybe a strong tropical storm… maybe a category 1 hurricane.

Puerto Rico Spared from Hurricane

But we didn't even get a rain drop. Not even a gust of wind, as the hurricane just missed Puerto Rico to the north. I think it did go by the U.S. and British Virgin Islands - didn't really do much damage, there, because the store hadn't intensified but Puerto Rico's gain will be Florida's loss. The storm did not go over Puerto Rico, and initially it was supposed to go over the Dominican Republic, and the mountains there, it's a much bigger island, and it would have really beaten up the storm, but because the storm was really uninterrupted, and it has been over water the entire time, now it looks like it will be a category 4 when it hits somewhere along the Florida coast. It looks like a pretty powerful storm.

Broken Window Theory

You're going to hear, as is always the case, economists are going to be saying, "Oh, well, this is good for GDP." Whenever there's a hurricane, people say, "Oh, look!  We have to spend all this money repairing and rebuilding everything that was destroyed."  But that is not good for the economy. If you haven't heard the "Broken Window Theory", Henry Hazlitt does a very good job of explaining that and refuting the Keynesian idea that disasters are somehow good for the economy.