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CNN Live Event/Special

America Under Attack: Effects of Bombings on Financial Markets

Aired September 12, 2001 - 06:42   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.
VINCE CELLINI, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go back now. David Haffenreffer is with us from New York, and he's going to bring us up to speed on the effect of the financial world -- David.

DAVID HAFFENREFFER: Indeed, Vince. Thank you.

All of the financial markets, as you might imagine, are closed in the U.S. today. Even trading of U.S. stocks that trade over the electronic trading firm, Instinet, have been halted. European markets are open for business at this early hour.

Early in the session, many of the major indices were at three- year lows. They moved back into positive territory at one point, but have for the most part turned negative once again.

Here's a look at the latest figures at this point: In London, the FT-100 index is basically unchanged at this point. We've got the XETRA-DAX in Frankfurt down by 28 points. In Paris, the CAC-40 lower by 71 points, a decline of 1.6 percent. The Zurich Swiss market index now lower by 1.1 percent.

A look at how the dollar is trading against the other major global currencies. And the Bank of England has -- says the U.S. Federal Reserve has now urged central banks to limit dollar trading to help cut back on the turmoil in the financial markets. We should note that the dollar fell about 2 percent vs. the euro yesterday after the incident in downtown Manhattan. At this point, we've got the euro weaker: down about a third of a cent there at 90 cents (UNINTELLIGIBLE). We've got the pound trading at 1.46, and the dollar trading a bit higher vs. the Japanese yen -- 119.5 a Japanese yen.

Asian markets are now closed for the day, but here is how they ended the session overnight: We had the Nikkei 225 index in Tokyo lower by about 6 percent; Hang Seng index in Hong Kong lower by 8 percent. All of these declines sparking some concerns about a possible recession here in the United States.

In fact, Sonja Gibbs, the chief equity strategist at Nomura Securities in London telling us this morning that consumer confidence is expected to be hurt in the United States because of all of these terrorist attacks, and that could take a big chunk out of the U.S. gross domestic product figures through the end of the year -- Vince and Carol, back to you.

CELLINI: David, we keep hearing that word "recession," and certainly we'll be in touch with you throughout the days ahead.

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