4  BIS Review 40/2010  Corporate balance sheets in Canada are healthy. Profitability is good, with the ratio of profits to GDP back to its long-term average of 10 per cent. Leverage – i.e., debt-to-equity – ratios are low and liquidity levels are high. Corporate tax rates have declined. Absolute borrowing costs are low.
As for the economic effects, clearly business activity has been hampered in the areas directly in the path of the hurricanes, though the impact of this on the US economy as a whole doesn't seem to have been particularly large. Longer term, those parts of the US capital stock which were damaged or destroyed need to be repaired or re-built.