The destruction from Hurricane Sandy will negatively impact fourth quarter economic growth. Most of us have heard by now that not addressing the fiscal cliff will throw the United States back into recession. The CBO has warned and warned again. Similar to the trifecta of three separate weather events combining to create Frankenstorm, we have economic and political events colliding to do the same.

Economic forecasters are tallying up the damage from Hurricane Sandy and currently estimates are coming in at $50 billion. We expect Hurricane Sandy economic impact figures to rise. By comparison, Hurricane Katrina's economic devastation was eventually estimated to be $250 billion, with property damage alone estimated at $108 billion. Katrina hit on August 29, 2005. Q3 is July through September. Below is GDP for the time around the coming of Katrina.

National real GDP went from 3.2% to 2.1% from Q3 to Q4 2005. GDP does vary normally between quarters and there are many other factors which contribute to economic growth. Yet, the gulf states contribution to national GDP are minimal. Louisiana and Mississippi together are only 2.2% of national GDP. The eastern seaboard's economic contributions, on the other hand, are substantial. New York alone was 7.7% of national GDP in 2010 and New Jersey, 3.4%. Below is a graph of the state of Louisiana's GDP, annually. We see a dramatic growth rate drop after Katrina hit.

It is estimated that Katrina reduced Q3 and Q4 real national GDP by 0.7 and 0.5 percentage points respectively.

Yet as regions recover all sorts of stimulative economic activity occurs. Government spending increases due to benefits, emergency payouts, grants and other spending related to recovery from the Hurricane's damage. Construction increases and workers are hired to rebuild. After Katrina, the increased government spending, rebuilding and other recovery activity actually raised real GDP in by 0.5 percentage points in the first half of 2006.

Since the Eastern seaboard is such a large percentage of the national economy, we should expect Hurricane Sandy to negatively impact Q4 GDP but those effects should be over in 2013. We should also see an increase in economic growth in 2013 as rebuilding as well as government spending should jump up. If the economic activity losses that affect GDP are $50 billion, we can take the average nominal GDP of the last year and remove annualization to get about $3.9 trillion average in quarterly GDP. This gives a reduction of raw Q4 GDP by 1.3 percentage points, or 0.5 percentage points annualized. Sandy will show up in 4th quarter GDP figures and the hurricane will impact economic growth, abet temporarily. Q1 and Q2 of 2013 on the other hand, should give an economic boost, highly dependent on government spending and rebuilding.

Why then the title the perfect economic storm if GDP will be impacted yet that economic contraction is temporary? After all, the reconstruction should give a stimulative boost to the first half of 2013. The reason is the fiscal cliff and the third element in the economic storm trifecta, Obama's grand bargain, being negotiated by Congress in secret, under the guise of addressing the fiscal cliff and being lobbied for by CEOs.

The CBO projects if Congress does not act to stop the across the board budget cuts, known as the fiscal cliff, America will sink into recession. The CBO has been sounding the alarm bell as has the Federal Reserve on the fiscal cliff. Current law's sharp deficit cuts are projected to cause a -0.5% GDP contraction from Q4 2012 to Q4 2013 and increase the unemployment rate by 1.1% by Q4 2013. This is a 5.1% deficit reduction as a percentage of GDP. The sharp cuts will throw the U.S. into a recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Below are the CBO slides illustrating what will happen.

The gathering storm isn't addressing the fiscal cliff in and of itself. It is what this administration and Congress may do in the lame duck Congressional session after the election under the guise of stopping the fiscal cliff. There is talk of cutting social security and Medicare. President Obama mentioned his deficit cutting grand bargain in this Des Moines Register interview.

I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I've been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending, and work to reduce the costs of our health care programs.

And we can easily meet -- "easily" is the wrong word -- we can credibly meet the target that the Bowles-Simpson Commission established of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, and even more in the out-years, and we can stabilize our deficit-to-GDP ratio in a way that is really going to be a good foundation for long-term growth. Now, once we get that done, that takes a huge piece of business off the table.

Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction recommendations call for cuts to social security and Medicare. One Medicare cut is to cap payouts and to social security are recommendations to raise the payroll tax. Other proposed cuts to social security are to remove the cost of living adjustments and raise the age when one can receive benefits. There is no talk of raising the limit on maximum taxable earnings for FICA taxes.

Bill Black has been warning of Obama's grand bargain to reduce social security benefits by claiming to deal with the fiscal cliff.

Robert Kuttner has written much of the column I intended to write on this subject, so I will point you to his excellent column and add a few thoughts.

Kuttner wrote to warn that Obama intends to seek a “grand bargain” causing the U.S. to adopt the type of austerity program that threw the Eurozone back into a gratuitous recession.

Worse, Obama intends to begin to unravel the safety net (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) to convince the Republicans to enter into this Faustian bargain.

Way back in the 2008 primaries, we warned Obama would partially privatize social security, a long desired Wall Street objective.

There are other critical programs on the chopping block, all propping up the poor and lower income Americans which, lest we forget, is most of America. The earned income tax credit, the child tax credit and the college tuition tax credit are all set to expire. The home mortgage interest deduction is also on the table to be cut.

The grand bargain, this supposed deal is all about letting the top income Bush tax cuts expire in exchange for starting the destruction of America's social safety nets. The thing is, Obama had that chance to let the Bush tax cuts expire earlier and he caved and let them be extended instead. The Congress tackling the fiscal cliff is the same Congress who would manufacture a debt ceiling crisis, resulting in a of the credit downgrade of the United States.

This is why we project the perfect economic storm is bearing down on the American people. We know hurricane Sandy will negatively impact economic growth. We know the fiscal cliff will cause an economic contraction severe enough to throw the United States into recession. We also know we have a crazy and very corrupt Congress, corporate lobbyists everywhere and a so called Democratic President willing to throw most Americans under the bus through disguised austerity measures. If social security and Medicare are slashed, this will jolt America into austerity, causing permanent economic contractions similar to Greece, Spain and all other nations in hock up to their eyeballs in order to pay back investors who traded in their debt.