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To: Jill who wrote (41283)9/11/2001 7:36:26 PM
From: Dealer  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 65232
 
Yes Jill! That was Barbara Olson, I really enjoyed her on some of the magazine news shows......quite young and attractive. Wrote a book about Hillary Clinton (see Nick's post 42178)

What a shame.

dealie



To: Jill who wrote (41283)9/11/2001 7:44:41 PM
From: lightwave51  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 65232
 
>>Actually I do not see it as a cowardly act, I see it as amazingly brazen & brilliantly strategized

A real American speaks?



To: Jill who wrote (41283)9/11/2001 7:46:58 PM
From: stockman_scott  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 65232
 
GLOBAL MARKETS-Investors buy safe assets after attack on US

By Ross Finley

NEW YORK, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Investors across the world snapped up safe assets like gold and U.S. Treasuries on Tuesday after two planes careened into New York's World Trade Center, sending it crashing to the ground and pummeling confidence in global stocks and the dollar.

Two hijacked passenger airplanes ripped into the 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan at the start of the New York trading day, triggering huge explosions that hit at the heart of global finance.

Panicked investors, seeking a safe haven for their cash amid fears the United States could slide into recession, drove up U.S. Treasuries, gold, oil and industrial metals prices. Europe's benchmark stock indexes fell to December 1998 lows, with insurers and airlines leading the drop.

U.S. stocks, which did not open for trading on Tuesday, were expected to tumble sharply when trading reopens. The New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq said they will remain closed through Wednesday. They said they will decide on Wednesday, with input from the Securities and Exchange Commission, on when to reopen. Most markets in Europe and Asia were set to open as usual.

Stanley Nabi, managing director at Credit Suisse Asset Management in New York, which oversees $110 billion, said ``it will be awful'' when trading resumes.

``There are two reasons. The first is psychological. Obviously, this is a blow. The second is fundamental. I think this will make the slowdown accelerate into a recession.''

Treasury prices were frozen in morning New York trade after the Bond Market Association recommended an early close of the market. Two-year note yields were pinned at 3.31 percent, a historic low, but traders said quotes were not reliable given the mayhem at New York bond dealers.

The bond association said it had recommended trading be closed on Wednesday. A spokesman said the industry trade group was taking the situation ``day by day'' and would review on Wednesday the timing of a reopening.

Cantor Fitzgerald and Garban-Intercapital, two of the world's largest fixed-income interdealer brokers, were located in the World Trade Center.

The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), both closed Tuesday, canceled electronic trading for Tuesday evening and said open outcry pit trading would be closed on Wednesday.

The New York Board of Trade's Chairman, Charles Falk, said his exchange, which was housed at Four World Trade Center, suffered ``significant damage'' and he was not sure if it could be restored. NYBOT has a backup facility on Long Island.

Loss of life was expected to be catastrophic from the collapse of the once-mighty twin towers, where roughly 40,000 people, most of them linked to financial markets, worked.

Traders said they feared U.S. benchmark stock indexes, already near their lowest levels of the year, could fall as much as 5 percent when trading reopened.

Stocks in Europe screeched more than 5 percent lower following the tragedy, dubbed the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. London's FTSE 100 index shed 5.7 percent in its biggest one-day fall since the crash of October 1987, wiping $98 billion off the value of shares.

William McDonough, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York which oversees U.S. monetary policy and plays a key role in ensuring stability in global financial markets, said the U.S. central bank was standing by to provide liquidity.

``Certainly part of our procedure is to provide that liquidity which is needed,'' McDonough told Reuters by phone from Basel, Switzerland, after attending meetings at the Bank for International Settlements.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt said in a statement that trading in stock markets will resume ``as soon as it is practicable to do so.''

The dollar fell 2 percent against the euro, gave up 3 yen and hit seven-month lows against the pound and the Swiss franc as investors fretted that the economic dislocation and loss of consumer and investor appetite following the tragedy could tip the world's largest economy into recession.

``Once a second plane went into the building panic set in and the euro just took off,'' said Hugh Walsh, trader at Fortis U.S.A. in midtown New York.

In thin, nervous dealings in Asia, the greenback was pinned to session lows near 91.70 cents per euro , down more than 1.90 percent from the previous U.S. close. The dollar came close to three-month lows around 118.55 yen, but steadied near 119 yen -- off a full 3 yen from four-week peaks hit overnight against the Japanese currency.

Euribor short-term interest rate futures soared, implying heightened expectations of lower euro zone rates. The December contract was 0.19 higher at 96.29, its highest since May 1999.

All of Europe's sector indices except energy fell. Insurers were the hardest hit, the sector dropping 11 percent. Swiss Re plummeted 15.7 percent, Axa tumbled 13.3 percent and Royal & Sun Alliance (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: RSA.L), fell 14.44 percent.

``This is not a markdown, people are actually selling the insurers and it's particularly heavy for the reinsurers who take on a lot of the risks for disaster insurance,'' said one London dealer.

Energy stocks, meanwhile, rose 3.8 percent. BP (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: BP.L) tacked on 5.2 percent, Shell (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: SHEL.L) climbed 3.5 percent and TotalFinaElf edged up 2.9 percent.

Gold prices shot up $16 an ounce after the attacks, with the afternoon fixing hitting $287.00 from $271.40 in the morning and compared with $272 before the first strike.

IPE Brent crude oil futures surged $3.60 a barrel to $31.05, rising above the $30 mark for the first time since December 2000.

The New York Mercantile Exchange was also closed.

Several top financial services firms had offices in the destroyed World Trade Center, including Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MWD - news), Switzerland's Credit Suisse Group and Germany's Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank .

(Additional reporting by Andrew Priest in New York, Sabrina Ghani, Sophy Walker, James Thornhill and Emily Kaiser in London)



To: Jill who wrote (41283)9/11/2001 8:53:57 PM
From: bela_ghoulashi  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 65232
 
It was an unprovoked attack on innocent, unsuspecting, and totally defenseless people.

It was an attack on normalcy by means of normalcy. One of the most basic features of our everyday lives was turned against us as a weapon. Not against our military, but directly against us, the citizens of this country, and the peaceful routine of our lives.

There is nothing about it that was NOT cowardly. There was no bravery or valor involved of any kind.



To: Jill who wrote (41283)9/11/2001 10:41:06 PM
From: T L Comiskey  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 65232
 
Jill ...........
A brief view...

"Old Man of the Mountain"

"Assassin" is now a common noun in most European languages, but it first came to the West from Arabic around the time of the Crusades, when it was the name of a
secretive Muslim sect feared by the Crusaders and the Muslim establishment alike. Bernard Lewis traces the origins of the Assassin sect to the Shiite branch of Islam
whereby the Assassins were to the first group to make planned, systematic and long term use of murder as a political weapon. They were history's first terrorists.

Throughout the later centuries, however, the Assassins became hired, secret murderers, of a peculiarly skillful and dangerous kind. Although they were known as among
the hazards of the East, they were not explicitly connected with any particular place, sect or nation, nor ascribed any religious beliefs or political purposes to them. They
were simply ruthless and competent killers and must be guarded against as such.

As Lewis notes in his book, "The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam," by the thirteenth century, the word Assassin, in various forms, had already passed into European
usage in the general sense of hired professional murderer. The Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani, who died in 1348, tells how the lord of Lucca sent "his assassins" to
Pisa to kill a troublesome enemy there.

Even earlier, Dante, in a passing reference in the 19th canto of the Inferno, speaks of "the treacherous assassin"; and his fourteenth-century commentator Fancesco da
Buti, explaining a term which for some readers at the time may still have been strange and obscure, remarked: "An assassin is one who kills others for money."

Since then "assassin" has become a common noun in most European languages. It means a murderer or, more particularly, one who kills by stealth or treachery, whose
victim is a public figure and whose motive is fanaticism or greed.

Of course, as Lewis notes, it was not always so. The word first appeared in the chronicles of the Crusades, as the name of a strange group of Muslim sectaries in the
Levant, led by a mysterious figure known as the "Old Man of the Mountain", and abhorrent, by their beliefs and practices, to good Christians and Muslims alike.

One such report quoted by Lewis, of an envoy sent to Egypt and Syria in 1175 by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, states that "this breed of men live without law; they
eat swine's flesh against the law of the Saracens, and make use of all women without distinction, including their mothers and sisters.... They have among them a Master,
who strikes the greatest fear into all the Saracen princes both far and near, as well as the neighbouring Christian lords."

This "Master" or "Old Man of the Mountain" had struck the imagination of much of Europe so much so that, at one time, he became an anecdote for undying devotion in
love and romance. "You have me more fully in your power," says a Provencal troubadour to his lady, "than the Old Man has his Assassins, who go to kill his mortal
enemies...." "Just as the Assassins serve their master unfailingly," says another, "so I have served Love with unswerving loyalty." In time, however, it was murder, rather
than loyalty and devotion, that made the more powerful impression, and gave the word assassin the meaning that it has retained to the present day.