There Won't Be War

The Soviet Embassy in London was unavailable for comment. The US Treasury Department is expected to make a statement later in the day.

NewsBurst: 12:51 G.M.T.

Initial damage caused by the Soviet attack appears to have been limited, and the main clearing banks are switching in their reserve and back-up capacity. About 30% of the damaged dealer desks are up and running from back-ups, but the virus-infected optical discs are still in quarantine with DTI investigators and S&Q Enterprises called in. The attack failed to induce a massive slide, but Snake currencies are shaky and an unscheduled internal adjustment has been announced for this afternoon. Interest rates have not yet been affected, but announcements are expected hourly.

At 12:49 the European Currency Unit stood at 0.92 Roubles, down 23 Kopeks in just three and a half hours. The U.S. Dollar remained stable at 0.89 ECUs, three cents up on yesterday.

A press conference has been scheduled by the Soviet Embassy in nine minutes’ time and will be covered by this service. Just in:

At the press conference in Washington that has just ended, the U.S. Treasury Department spokesman, Mr. John Flatbush, read the following statement but left the platform before he could be asked any questions:

“At nine hundred hours today the Treasury Department’s monitoring service became aware of the serious nature of the current Russian attack on London. We are of course monitoring the present scenario in real-time, but we do not believe that there are any grounds for alarm in this country. The days of the great corporate raiders—Icahn and Boesky and the like—are over, thanks to the decisive lead provided by the Jackson administration in restructuring the U.S. economy. There are no grounds to fear a joint Japanese-Soviet attack on our corporate heartland, but in order to prevent any localized slides we are taking action to freeze European assets held in U.S. stocks and bonds. These shares will be underwritten by the Federal Reserve Bank for the duration of the—er, instability.

“It falls to me to say—off the record—that any of our boys who go in there deserve the best of luck and our encouragement in fighting the good fight and getting while the getting’s good on foreign soil! This could be the offshore investment opportunity of the century.”

NewsBurst: 13:27 G.M.T.

At 13:03 today, the Soviet trade attache, Ms. V. I. Retshuchenko, released the following statement, reproduced in its entirety:

“My friends, this morning forces based within the RFSFR launched an economic attack upon the United States of Europe, with the goal of dominating those states. On behalf of the government of the RFSFR, may I express our sincere sympathy for the victims of this unprecedented offensive; unfortunately we are unable to prevent further incursions. The hostile forces appear to be a secret consortium of Soviet industry, including Mikoyan-Gurevitch design bureau, Glavkosmos, and the First Consolidated Peoples’ Bank of Azerbaijan; these corporations appear to be cooperating with extranational powers of unknown identity.

“As you know, such an attack would have been both impossible and implausible if the RFSFR still retained the old, monolithic industrial centralism of the decadent Lenin-Brezhnev era. Following the marked improvements in international progress and trade of the past decade, however, certain organizations listed on the Moscow stock exchange have decided that the Soviet economy cannot support their investment programs. They appear to have decided that a leveraged buy-out of the entire Western economy would be a suitable way of resolving their balance of payments surplus, and unfortunately the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is unable to restrain them.

“Bluntly, such a sequence of events was not considered possible, and no restraining legislation has been drafted. The Politburo is not sanguine about the consequences, however. We have no desire to return to the isolationist, Cold War mentality of the seventies and eighties, and in any event such a policy will inevitably induce considerable public discontent.

“President Boris Yeltsin has expressed his condolences for the victims of the conflict, and has promised maximum cooperation with the European authorities in an attempt to negotiate an end to the shares war before the G-9 talks are jeopardized.

“Thank you very much indeed for coming here. Goodbye.”

NewsBurst: 14:56 G.M.T.