HANK PAULSON, the US Treasury Secretary, is to launch a thorough review of Wall Street’s ability to operate in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster amid growing concerns that little progress has been made since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
US Treasury sources told The Times that Mr Paulson, the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs appointed as Secretary of the Treasury earlier this year, has asked the President’s working group on financial markets to produce a report detailing the progress made on disaster preparedness in the past five years.
There are major concerns among some of Wall Street’s biggest banks that power and telecommunications services do not yet have sufficient back-up to bring the financial markets back on line in the event of an attack or a disaster.
There are also worries that, although much has been done to prepare for another attack by terrorists, little has been done to prepare markets for a public health crisis such as a flu pandemic during which few people would be expected to travel to work for fear of infection.
One possibility Wall Street executives want to discuss with telecom companies and regulators is whether non-essential internet traffic could be blocked if securities industry workers were forced to stay at home en masse. Wall Street firms blamed many of their problems in 2001 on damage to one of Verizon Communications’ five switching centres in Lower Manhattan.
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Mr Paulson, who is currently travelling in Asia, is expected to elaborate on the plans next week, to coincide with Monday’s fifth anniversary of the 2001 attacks.
In Vietnam yesterday, Mr Paulson reiterated his support for a strong dollar.
“I am very much in favour of a strong dollar because that is in our nation’s interests,” Mr Paulson told a university audience in Hanoi, owhere he attended an Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum meeting. “The value of the dollar should be set in open and competitive markets.”
The dollar has lost 6.7 per cent against the euro in the past six months.