Bloomberg Businessweek quotes Transatlantic Relations Program Nonresident Senior Fellow Nicholas Dungan on the terrorist attack in Paris on the office of the newspaper of Charlie Hebdo:
We tracked down Nicholas Dungan in London last night. He’s a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, specializing in France; senior adviser at the Institut de Relations Internationales et Strategiques; on the faculty at France’s uber-prestigious Sciences Po university; and a former investment banker with Merrill Lynch and Societe Generale, among other bright spots in his bio.
“Stock markets reflect the future value of the production of the economy,” he said. “Yes, they reflect fear and greed, but the idea that this attack is somehow connected to a larger threat to the West, that it is somehow imminent that it is going to have an effect on business or finance, would be far-fetched, and in that sense it makes sense that the markets haven’t reacted.
But…
‘‘Even though this attack occurred, the one thing everybody knows about France is that its security is fantastic and water-tight,’’ Dungan, 63, said. ‘‘The fact that these guys got through to what was actually probably a pretty soft target is absolutely no indication, I don’t think, of any sort of larger vulnerability.’’