Last updated: 1:35 pm
September 12, 2008
Posted: 3:54 am
September 11, 2008
SEVEN years ago today terrorists crashed four jetliners into the US economy.
It's downright callous, if not inhumane, of course, for me to talk about the financial fallout of Sept. 11, 2001, since 2,975 people were killed, thousands were injured and everyone was affected by those attacks.
And we will always remember, first and foremost, the human suffering caused by the small group of heartless cowards who hijacked those planes.
But it is a fact that a lot of the financial problems we are now experiencing - including federal deficits, a declining housing market, banking problems, the sickly dollar and a large drop in overall confidence - have, to one degree or another, grown from the aftermath of what happened seven years ago.
That sentence is very hard to write.
None of us wants to imagine that Osama bin Laden is getting any satisfaction reading today's gloomy financial pages while holed up in some bat-infested Afghan cave.
But hopefully by understanding that this outlaw caused some of our current grief we will be able to pull ourselves together and come up with solutions.
You'll recall that back in 2001 most people expected imminent and enormous financial problems from the terrorist attacks.
The stock market was unable to open for business for a week; many industries were certain that their customers would pull back spending and an overall gloom had settled over the economy of this country and the world.
Well, as it turned out, things weren't all that bad - at least not at first.
Some deft financial engineering in the form of flooding the financial system with money left people and companies feeling pretty good when the dust had settled.
The powers in Washington managed to keep the stock market from the collapse that many thought was inevitable.
And we all went on our merry way. So far, it was so good.
We are now suffering the effects of too much of a good thing.
If a kid skins his knee and his mother gives him a lollipop to ease the pain, that's good. Give him twelve suckers and there's likely to be pain.
All that money pumped into the financial system by then-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, with the encouragement of our very frightened elected officials, turned a good thing into financial bubbles.
