An informal coalition of government and business implored the leaders of Wall Street on Sunday to do what they could as a patriotic duty to keep the stock markets from tumbling when they reopened yesterday morning.
Returning to the White House from Camp David on Sunday afternoon, President Bush said, "No question about it, this incident affected our economy." But he also expressed "great faith" in the nation's economic and financial resiliency.
"The markets open tomorrow, people go back to work, and we'll show the world," Bush said.
The Federal Reserve Board and its counterparts in Europe and Japan chose not to take any action in advance of Wall Street's attempt to return to normal after the devastation of Tuesday. Japanese stocks fell sharply early yesterday.
But with much riding on the stock market's opening, both psychologically and financially, officials from the administration, the Fed, and the Securities and Exchange Commission mounted a campaign to bolster investor and consumer confidence and win cooperation from top executives of the nation's major banking and investment companies.
They made clear that the government expects the industry to put the need for a smooth opening in the stock market ahead of short-term trading strategies or other business decisions that might drive share prices down.
William J. McDonough, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said he had spoken in the past few days to financial executives including William B. Harrison, the president of JP Morgan Chase; Philip Purcell, the chairman of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter; John Mack, the chief executive of Credit Suisse First Boston, and David Komansky, the chairman of Merrill Lynch.
Patriotic crusade
McDonough said in an interview on Sunday that his message to the banking and investment industries was that "the whole financial sector realize that tomorrow is a challenge and that it is important that we do well tomorrow."
He told them, he said, that "they should be taking care of all the needs of their customers" and "should be making wise credit decisions."
At the same time, everyone from Vice President Dick Cheney to commentators and ministers in the pulpit sought to turn helping the market get restarted into something of a patriotic crusade, and maybe even good business.
In an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday night, Warren Buffett, one of the nation's best-known and most successful in-vestors, said that he "won't be selling anything" when the market opens and that if prices fall enough, "there's some things I might buy."
He was joined on "60 Minutes" by Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary who is now with Citigroup, and Jack Welch, who recently retired as chairman of General Electric Co, both of whom offered similar messages of reassurance to investors.
Blow to confidence
The Fed declined to comment on the schedule of its chairman, Alan Greenspan. But underscoring the focus that policy-makers have put on getting the stock market operating again as a step toward re-establishing economic normalcy, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill left Washington on Sunday after a National Security Council meeting and traveled to New York, where he planned to be on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at 9:30 yesterday morning, when it intends to open.
The economy in the US appeared to be on the brink of recession even before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Many economists said the blow to consumer and investor confidence and the slowdown in economic activity caused by the disruptions to air travel and ordinary commerce are likely to be enough to push it over the edge.
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