Greenspan Remains in Touch With Fed

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is in communication with the Fed from an undisclosed location after his flight from Switzerland to Washington returned to Zurich’s international airport after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Fed said.

Although Fed spokesman David Skidmore would not confirm the reports, Swiss police told Reuters the Fed chief still was in Switzerland, where he had attended a Bank of International Settlements meeting in Basel.

Skidmore said he could not say whether the Fed chairman was in touch with a group of major U.S. financial market regulators, who said earlier in the day that they had been in constant communication after the attacks.

The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets is an ad hoc organization set up to deal with issues facing the U.S. financial system. It consists of the Treasury Department, the Fed, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Earlier, the Fed and the European Central Bank said they stood ready to provide liquidity to ensure the proper functioning of financial markets.