http://www.boston.com/dailynews/319/world/United_Nations_sees_200_billio:.shtml

United Nations sees $200 billion cost to United States from attacks

By Alexander G. Higgins, Associated Press, 11/15/2001 12:15

GENEVA (AP) The Sept. 11 attacks could cost the United States roughly $200 billion, equivalent to a devastating earthquake, the United Nations said Thursday.

''The upshot is that the magnitude of costs appears to be manageable both in absolute and relative terms given the enormous size of the United States economy,'' said the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe.

''But unlike an earthquake,'' it added, ''the terrorist attacks and their aftermath may have a deeper and longer-lasting psychological effect to the extent that they have eroded people's sense of political and economic security.''

It remains to be seen how much impact they will have on consumer and business confidence, the commission said in its 45-page autumn report on the economies of Europe and North America.

The terrorist attacks and the military reprisals on Afghanistan ''have amplified the uncertainty that was already considerable'' about the U.S. and world economy at the beginning of September, it said.

''At the time of the attacks the United States economy and those in other major regions were on the edge of stagnation,'' said the commission, which surveys the economies of Europe and North America twice a year.

The commission said it was still too soon ''to gauge with any reasonable degree of certainty'' the full impact of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, including the spillover effect on other countries.

But, it said, the $200 billion figure would be the equivalent of 2 percent of the U.S. economy's gross domestic product. By comparison, the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, cost $120 billion, or 2.5 percent of Japan's GDP, it said.

-- Anonymous, November 16, 2001