2005年NPR美国国家公共电台七月-Stocks Shudder at Early London Attack

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On the financial markets, traders reacted quickly to today’s news, London’s FTSE Index lost about 4% of its value but then recovered about half of that before the close of trading.

In the US stocks managed to shake off bad news from abroad and closed up on the day. NPR’s Adam Davidson has this report on how the markets interpreted today’s events.

One way to measure how panicky the markets are about the future is to look at the price of gold. When investors¹ are scared, many turn to financial instruments with stable secure value and little is more stable than gold. Sure enough, right after the bombings in London, gold prices moved up. Andrew Spendon who runs global Effects, a currency-trading firm in New York was awakened² by a staff when the attacks happened. He then watched the price of gold rise.

It took about one, two, three, four minutes for it to go up almost two bucks³, then it held and it fell and then it went up another two dollars over the course of the next ten minutes.
Four dollars in fifteen minutes is a pretty fast move for gold. It suggests investors were quite panicky all over the world. But then, over the next several hours, investors stopped being so scared and the price of gold started to come back down. The price dropped to less than it was just before the attacks. A sign that investors were confident that the world economy would not be terribly damaged. The same thing happened in markets around the world. Initial panic followed by a steady return to pre-attack levels. Steven Roch, the chief economist⁴ of Morgan Stanley says that traders around the world were overall remarkably⁵ calm and reasonable during the day.

While it’s initially⁶ tempting⁷ to conclude that this will be a devastating⁸ event, we’ve learnt through experience that the world is an extraordinarily⁹ resilient place.
After September 11th and the bombings in Bali and Madrid the world economy has endured even prospered¹⁰. That has reassured¹¹ investors and brought stability to markets even in the face of horrible events. Spendon, the currency trader says that some traders might have looked at today’s attacks with horror, but also some were relieved that they weren’t worse that there were no biological, chemical or nuclear weapons involved.

Maybe we, you know, we have degraded their ability to mount an attack.

Others say just the opposite , that today’s attack simply reminds investors that terrorism is a serious and on-going threat. In fact, today’s attacks are likely to have a noticeable impact on Great Britain’s economy, says Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia group.

First of all Britain's gonna have to spend a lot more money on counter -terrorism. They will, that’s going to impact their budget. Second, I expect there’s going to be real infrastructure¹² damage , it will take them a while to get backup and running simply in terms of basic, public services, getting people to work on time again, that’s going to have a negative impact on GDP in Britain.

Typically, the tourism industry suffers the most economic loss after a terrorist attack. Today, spurred by London’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympics, tourism officials were to begin planning an intense tourism marketing¹³ campaign for the city. That program has been put on hold. Tour operators say it’s simply too early to tell how these attacks will affect hotels, restaurants and other tourism companies in London.
Adam Davidson, NPR News.