By Robert Presser on October 26, 2011
Looking back on the economic aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center is a difficult process because so much of it involves speculation as to what might have been. How would the US have spent, or better yet, not spent, the one to two trillion dollars required to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? How much growth has been denied to the developing world because of curtailed investment out of the fear of continued attacks on first world assets abroad? What opportunities have been missed because of travel avoidance in our personal and professional lives? All of these hypothetical and theoretical alternative economic scenarios are challenging to quantify but are worth considering if we are to chart an economic course through what looks to become a decades-long war against international terrorism.
