| Headline: Markets braced after terror attack Source: Euromoney Date: September 2001 Euromoney’s September edition had already gone to press when news broke of the horrific terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The sheer scale of the destruction and loss of life numbs the mind, making rational analysis almost impossible. Financial markets consist of nothing more than men and women buying and selling. In the immediate aftermath few could turn their minds to anything so mundane as dealing or stock tipping. It’s likely that every reader of Euromoney will have known people who worked in the World Trade Centre and it is with those unfortunate individuals that most people’s thoughts now lie. But capital and markets do not stand still for long. A flight to the safety of cash, short-term government securities and gold, the selling of equities, and other riskier assets, began almost at once in Europe and Asia.The immediate concerns are that, against an already gloomy background of economic slowdown across America, Europe, Asia and Latin America and with world stock markets already falling, this unforeseen horror – striking the heart of the US financial establishment – may cause institutions to fail, prompt further collapses in global markets and, by puncturing the optimism of the American consumer, prolong and deepen recession in the US and the world. |