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American Morning

America Recovers: Interview of 'FORTUNE' Reporter at NYSE Opening

Aired November 06, 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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The bell has, apparently, already rung at the New York Stock Exchange. We are efforting to usher in the New York Stock Exchange yet another day. The market did well yesterday. The Nasdaq, meanwhile, is open for business as well.

Andy Serwer is here. He's on a bit of short leash today, but that's another issue entirely.

On everybody's mind today in this picture, they're thinking about Alan Greenspan and how big a rate cut it will be. Will it be a half point, a quarter point? Clearly, there will be a cut.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE": At 2:15 today, the FOCM will announce rate cut, certainly. Whether it will be a half or a quarter, we'll see. The people who say half say we need a boost, we had this terrible GDP and unemployment numbers last week. The people who want a quarter say don't spend all your powder; we need some wiggle room. Don't get it down to zero, like Japan, and beware inflation. In other words, if we stimulate the economy too much, we could have inflation further next year.

You can see we've a bunch of rate cuts this year already. This will be number 10.

A lot of people say in all the rate cuts, mortgages haven't come down. But that's because you haven't checked with your mortgage broker over the past three months. Mortgages have come down a whole lot over the past couple of months. I don't know if we have a chart here. Right now, 30-years are at 6.13 percent. Three months ago, they were at 6.62 percent. See how they trended down over the past couple months?

I was just talking to a mortgage broker last week, and she said she is dying to take a vacation. There is so much refinancing going on right now, which is a really positive thing for the economy. And those other rates are coming down too, 15-years. A year ago the rate was at 7.4 and even over 8, back in early 2000.

O'BRIEN: Quickly, what are you watching today?

SERWER: I think we're going to be watching Ford. There are rumors of more layoffs there. We're going to be looking at financial stocks. If you want to have fun, Miles, and I know you might like to do this, at 2:15, log on to cnn.money or Yahoo! or something and watch the market go nuts for a little while as traders and investors respond to that rate cut.

O'BRIEN: 2:15 Eastern, that's where I'll be. I know that's where you'll be too, Andy Serwer of "FORTUNE" magazine ushering in another day of trading on the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange.

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