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American Morning

America Recovers: Markets Prepare to Open After a Down Day

Aired October 18, 2001 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: And Andy Serwer is a man who has nothing else to do at this hour but watch the opening bell. He's at "Fortune" magazine.

How are you this morning?

ANDY SEWER, "FORTUNE": I'm OK, a little beaten up after yesterday's market action, but you know, eventually, this anthrax stuff, all the scares, all these reports have got to catch up with market. We kept asking, how long can this go on?

ZAHN: We talked about that yesterday.

SERWER: Yesterday, I think the news finally caught up with the stock market.

ZAHN: All right, now, Alan Greenspan said some stuff yesterday at a time when we were hearing dreaded "R" word spoken out loud for the first time from government officials.

SERWER: Right. That is right.

ZAHN: What are we supposed to glean from all of this?

SERWER: Well, here's where we stand, Paula.

yesterday, Alan Greenspan testified before a joint committee to Congress. Basically his comments were, surprise, surprise, incredibly measured. He said we had some very ill effects from the attack, but we would come back. He did talk a little bit about the frictional cost of the attacks and our effort to combat the terrorists.

ZAHN: I don't know what that means.

SERWER: Frictional costs means all the security that we need at airports, all the time we need to inspect mail and packages. All that is extra cost within the economy, and that is going to hurt us. but we did get some comments that were very interesting from Larry Lindsey, the chief White House economic aid, and he basically suggested that we are going to be in recession. If you take the third quarter is going to be contracting, and the fourth quarter, you add them up, that's two quarters in a row. He basically came out and said it yesterday.

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