Who could have suspected at the time that a mere eighteen months later, on the eleventh of September, an act of unprecedented brutality would put the international financial system under threat? 11 September: also an attack on financial stability On Tuesday the eleventh of September, it was soon brought home that the system of (international) payments was running the risk of becoming seriously unsettled.
It was not at all certain either at that point whether the financial markets would continue to function properly. Fortunately, despite some minor hitches, payment systems could be kept operational. Even so, the American financial markets did not open again until the seventeenth of September. Since that day, the FED, the ECB and several other central banks have cut their interest rates.