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CNN Live At Daybreak
Markets Open After Wednesday Rally
Aired October 11, 2001 - 09:29 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 we're just about a minute away from the stock exchanges opening up this morning. In advance of that I'm going to check in with Andy Serwer of "Fortunate" magazine to sort of walk us through the paces this morning.
Do futures tell us any direction we should be aware of?
ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: The futures are saying thumbs up. And yesterday, of course, Paula was an amazingly wonderful day on Wall Street. I believe...
ZAHN: You predicted that, Andy.
SERWER: I sort of did.
ZAHN: You did -- no, you did.
SERWER: OK, I did. All right. The technical term is "va va voom." You know, the Nasdaq was up almost 4 percent, the Dow as up 2 percent, futures were up. A lot of positives. The Dow kept moving higher throughout the day. A broad-based rally, strong volume. And the futures have been great. Europe was up 1 or 2 percent. Japan was up about 4 percent. And the futures have been up nicely and we've had some -- a very important economic report this morning.
ZAHN: So why don't we all watch and...
(BELL RINGING)
ZAHN: Once again you have members of the New York Police Department, Fire Department there joining in the opening bell action.
Come back to some of the great performers yesterday and give us some insight as to whether that up pattern might continue for them.
SERWER: Yes, a very broad -- I think one thing I want to point out is the S&P 500, which is a broader index, a more representative index of the overall stock market, is now only down 1.1 percent from where it was September 10.
ZAHN: Really?
SERWER: Yes, so we really bounced back a lot. I mean, yesterday was a huge rally. And as I said, it was very broad-based. But I want to talk a little bit about the jobless claims number that came out this morning at 8:30. Very important. Remember, before it was very high: 528,000 the week before. This week we were really hoping it was going to come in below 500,000, and it did.
ZAHN: It did.
SERWER: It came in at 468,000.
ZAHN: What do you attribute that to?
SERWER: Maybe...
ZAHN: I don't know anybody out there that doesn't have a job right now who is having an easy time finding one.
SERWER: Right. But what I'm -- when I was talking to some people who were saying that hotels, for instance, may have overreacted a little bit -- you know, they're laying off 300 people. All of a sudden people start coming back and they've got to bring people back into the fold -- employees back in.
These numbers are sort of a real-time indication of the economy, so it's very positive news. And the futures responded very well.
ZAHN: All right. You brought something along that our audience, I know, will find of a great deal of interest. There was a story in the "New York Times" today suggesting that Osama bin Laden is using a consortium of shops that sell honey to finance the activities of the al Qaeda network.
Show us what you brought, where you got it, what it means.
SERWER: Yes, I mean you're right, Paula. This morning my wife and I were reading the "New York Times" and we just about fell out of our chair because I'd gone to Saudi Arabia on assignment about two years ago, and I had stopped in a honey shop. My wife likes honey. And I bought this jar of honey in Riad. I don't know for sure if this has any relation to al Qaeda, but it's a little chilling nonetheless.
And I want to take the top off because -- what they say here is that this honey is used -- not only are these stores a front for money laundering potentially, but the honey itself is used to ship guns and contraband. It's not like ordinary honey. If you can see...
ZAHN: It's thick.
SERWER: ... it's extreme -- it's like molasses. And it smells very powerful. You can see that it would cover up anything that you were shipping in. And apparently in the "Times" they mentioned that if there was contraband in there, inspection officials just wouldn't have anything to do with it.
I mean, I've got some on my fingers here, and I don't know what I'm going to do. But if you can see -- I don't know if we can show it exactly how gooey and dark this stuff is. My wife hates it, she says it tastes like molasses.
ZAHN: Yes, well I was wondering why two years later, why you still had it.
SERWER: It's still there and I -- you know what, I think we're going to pitch this.
ZAHN: But you know, as we bring up this money trail, bring us up to date on the efforts underway to freeze Osama bin Laden's assets. There's also a report this morning that Saudi Arabia is refusing to freeze his assets.
SERWER: Right and...
ZAHN: Is there any progress being made on that front?
SERWER: It is a multi-faceted front, and it's extremely complex. I don't know if you saw a report on CNNFN yesterday by Chris Huntington about using just these check-cashing stores in the United States are linked to Atta, who was sending money through these things as well.
So you've got check-cashing stores, you've got accounts in Saudi Arabia, you've got honey shops throughout the Middle East. And, you know, it's really vexing the Treasury Department officials to try to track all of this down and to compile the information and to work with Interpol in Europe. It's a huge operation. It mirrors the military operation in its scale and scope.
ZAHN: And we're going to continue to follow that very closely from this side as well. Thank you for dropping by. Are you going to throw that away now, or...
SERWER: We're going to pitch it. We're going to pitch it.
ZAHN: ... are you going to save it for another two years, Andy?
ANDY: Well. No, I don't think I'm going to save it.
ZAHN: All right. See you a little bit later on this morning. Hope you're right about the markets again today.
SERWER: Well, I hope so.
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