Document Type
Occasional Paper
Publication Date
10-2004
Abstract
The World Trade Center Towers: they were the headquarters of Morgan Stanley, one of the world’s leading investment banks, and of Cantor Fitzgerald, the world’s leading trader of U.S. government bonds. They were also the work location of 9,000 Merrill Lynch employees. The Citicorp Building. The Prudential Tower. The New York Stock Exchange. These actual and recently uncovered potential terrorist targets in the United States are financial services companies and organizations. Add to them the threats to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and one could conclude that seven out of ten terrorists prefer financial services.
This focus on financial services by those who envy and loathe America is surely no accident. It arguably betrays some of the Marxist, or more accurately Leninist, ideological underpinnings of Al Queda's ostensibly "Islamist" ideology. The Koran is not the book that stresses the centrality of "Finanzkapital," or of banking as part of the "commanding heights" of the economy.
Recommended Citation
Franko, Lawrence G., "U. S. Competitiveness in the Global Financial Services Industry" (2004). Financial Services Forum Publications. 25.
https://scholarworks.umb.edu/financialforum_pubs/25
Comments
Working Paper #1001