The North Atlantic hurricane season runs from mid-August to
October, with a strong peak in storm activity around the middle
of September. A less familiar but even more destructive pattern
of disturbances is the financial hurricane season, which
coincides with the meteorological one almost to the day. Most of
the great financial crises of modern history have occurred in
the two months from mid-August: the Wall Street crashes of Oct.
22, 1907, Oct. 24, 1929, and Oct. 19, 1987; Britain’s
abandonment of the gold standard on Sept. 19, 1931; the postwar
sterling devaluation on Sept. 19, 1949; the collapse of the
Bretton Woods global monetary system on Aug. 15, 1971; the
Mexican default that triggered the Third World debt crisis on
Aug. 20, 1982; the breakup of the European exchange-rate
mechanism on Sept. 16, 1992; the Russian default on Aug. 17,
1998, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15. 2008 – and
this list could go on. The coincidence between financial and
meteorological hurricanes may not be entirely