back together. The Washington Post reported that “ More than 40,000 people occupied offices in a cluster of seven buildings surrounding the Trade Center Towers, and there was still no accurate count of how many were killed. The firms battered by the attack span a wide range of financial and business specialties, including the brokerage desks of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., insurance and risk management services at Marsh & McClennan Companies Inc., investment banking offices of Salomon Smith Barney and market analysts at Fred Alger Management Inc.” Many of the firms played a major role in the stock market. The Washington Post also reported “ Harwick Simmons, chief executive of the Nasdaq Stock Market, said that 19 of the 32 small stock brokerage firms located in the World Trade Center failed to respond to a test of the market’s electronic network. Securities and Exchange Commission spokesman John Heine said that the agency did not yet know the names of the 19 or where customers of those firms should go to find out about their accounts or recover their money.The foreign exchange markets have remained relatively calm, but within the bounds of normal variation. The New York Times reports that “ One of the central concerns over recent years in the US has been the emergence of the significance imbalance in the external account, as domestic consumption has continued to grow strongly with exceptionally low levels of private sector saving being recorded. The IMF were estimating a US current account deficit of 4.5 percent of GDP in 200 and 4.3 percent of GDP in 2001. The fear in the aftermath of the attacks is that US growth and confidence would evaporate and lead not only to a decline in in-coming capital flows but also to capital outflows. In these circumstances, the prospect of serious funding difficulties would some more sharply into focus with the dollar likely to come under pressure.” The ...
