for airlines. “ British Airways have announced 7,000 job cuts; American Airlines and United Airlines have announced 40,000 job cuts; Virgin Atlantic has announced 1,200 job losses; Air Canada are preparing to cut a further 7,000 jobs, on top of the 7,500 announced earlier this year; Delta Airlines is also expected to announce a cut of 16,000 jobs; Swiss Air has suspended all flights and is likely to be taken over or split up; Sabena has filed for bankruptcy.” Over 25,000 It and telecommunication workers around the world have been working intensely to assure continuity of service. The Washington Post reports “ Inclusive of the immediate cost of hardware and software replacement, over 20,000 IT and telecommunications contractors will support in-house teams for several weeks to ensure continuity of business for financial services. The costs include telecommunications and computer equipment replacement, installation and support. Over 100,000 IT personnel will be relocated. There will be more investment in security, data storage, back-up and disaster recovery audits, procedures and policies. The full extent of damage to telecommunications infrastructure in Manhattan is still not known. Underground installations will systematically need to be assessed, repaired, redesigned, replaced and re-routed as the clean up and reconstruction continues at least until 2004. The immediate impact of cost on communications infrastructure was 1.7 billion dollars and the long term impact is estimated to be 6 billion dollars.” The US policy response was that the US responded quickly to support economic activity by cutting interest rates. The Scottish Executive Publications reports “ Large amounts of liquidity were injected into the monetary system following the WTC attacks by the major monetary authorities across the G7 economies in order to ensure that the global financial system continued to function smoothly. The impact of...
