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Comment by rdouble | Hacker News Reader

The figures I gave were the direct damages, from wikipedia.

How do you end up with 430,000 lost jobs from direct damages due to the attack? No, I'm pretty sure those are damages due to the reactions to the attack, not damages due to the attack itself.

In New York City, there were approximately 430,000 jobs were lost and $2.8 billion in lost wages over the three months following the 9/11 attacks

That's just the number on wikipedia. 430,000 people lost their jobs in the 3 months after the attack. I supposed you could argue that it's not direct damages in the sense that 430K people were not all office workers in the WTC, but if they lost their job within 3 months of the attack it seems like the job loss is pretty directly related.

And, as a former NYC resident I would not at all be surprised if 430K people really did directly lose their job. The sheer number of people working in that area is immense. I remember an interview at the time with a guy whose bodega located down by Wall Street was destroyed, and he said he did $80K per week in business. And that's just one dude selling sodas, bottled water, cigarettes, etc.

Anybody who lost their job directly due to the attack would have lost it that day. Three months means job losses due to fear in the financial markets, economic pessimism, fear of subsequent attacks, etc. etc.

In other words, imagine a hypothetical world where the reaction to 9/11 was "damn, let's figure out who was behind this, go arrest them, and rebuild and carry on with our lives" rather than the "holy shit, let's declare a war on terrorism" reaction that actually happened. Do 430,000 jobs still get lost? No, I seriously doubt it. You lose some jobs because a bunch of office space got destroyed, but most of those jobs are still needed and will simply be relocated.

I've seen other figures that suggest that about 80K people lost their jobs immediately. I guess I'm not convinced that the rest of the job losses were due to economic pessimism and fear in the financial markets. I was assuming it included the bodega guy, the guy working for the bodega guy, couriers, tailors, every other small business owner in the area, people servicing those small business owners, the carpet cleaners, window washers, the outsourced IT guys, people servicing the physical infrastructure of the area, people who worked in the other buildings. etc. I could be totally off base, but blasting out part of the infrastructure of a city of 19M people seems like it could cause a relatively "direct" 2% job loss over 3 months.

The thing about job loss from the destruction of buildings is that most of it comes right back.. in a different building. It's only bad locally and temporarily.

I don't know if that's necessarily true. The downtown of the small city where I grew up was destroyed by a simultaneous flood and fire and most of the downtown businesses simply disappeared forever. Many small businesses are in economically tenuous positions and a catastrophic event will wipe them out. This causes all the employes to lose their jobs, and a chain reaction to other small businesses who relied upon the destroyed businesses. Applied to NYC scale, suggesting the job loss numbers mean "direct" unemployment in this sense seems reasonable to me, but I could be wrong.

This is deeply irrational.

The financial markets depend upon stability and law and order. They cannot function without it. The fear that markets and industries could be crippled with a simple bomb (not due to the reaction, but due to the event) did massive damage to the markets, which resonated and caused significant economic collateral damage. This is obvious given that the reaction to 9/11 was actually quite sedate for some time, and massive enterprises like the NSA's current adventure came about much later.

What markets and industries could actually be crippled with a simple bomb?

Exchanges, for one, in virtually any industry. Recall that one of the primary concerns after 9/11 were the NYSE, Nasdaq, Mercantile Exchange, etc. Banking centers. Oil refineries. Port. Etc.

I'm sure every major exchange has contingency plans to operate out of a backup location. I'm not aware of any single point of failure in banking, oil, or cargo, and if there were, mundane threats like weather would far outweigh terrorism anyway.

Singapore is a major point of failure in banking, oil and cargo.

But can't be taken out by a simple bomb, not even remotely close.

I think we disagree on what "crippled" means. You have taken it to mean "no longer functions or exists", which I think many handicapable people would disagree with. It simply means that it operates at a measurably diminished capacity in some regard, which with the economy can have profound implications.

If the NYSE building were bombed on an operating day, it would absolutely have dramatic financial repercussions, and that market would absolutely be crippled. Would some simile reappear? Of course it would, just as government would reappear if a full capital building were attacked. But the impact would be major and it would be felt.

If the traders could be rational enough to pick up and move to new temporary offices a few blocks over and carry on with their business the next day, the consequences of a NYSE bombing would not be so dire. The dramatic financial repercussions you mention would certainly happen, but only because people would panic.

correlation apparently thinks 9/11 strikes in NY were caused by a simple bomb instead of planes crashing into buildings.

I confess to pondering: Is your reply sarcasm? Raw stupidity? An attempt at being clever? Sorry, but you fail miserably at all of those.

No, 300bps, 9/11 brought a sense among both the populace and business that big, bad things can happen by just a few people with ill will. The response was a realization that the basic security and law and order could be so easily overridden.

But good effort, regardless.

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