[Hopkins:] On September 11, terrorists launched an attack that struck at the very heart of capitalism, Wall Street. Many companies lost their offices. Some sought new homes in nearby states. But others, including some major players, planned to stick it out. Kitty Pilgrim looks at these companies that are refusing to leave their homes on Wall Street.
[Kitty Pilgrim, Cnn Correspondent:] Manhattan versus New Jersey, Connecticut and the suburbs. It's an old rivalry. On the streets of New York, bad drivers are called New Jersey drivers. People from the areas outside of Manhattan and the suburbs of New Jersey are called the bridge and tunnel crowd. But after September 11, the New York-New Jersey rivalry turned serious. To stay or not to stay. New Jersey has offered tax breaks to entice businesses to move permanently. A handful of companies have applied, although few have definitely committed. American Express has relocated more than 2,000 employees to New Jersey and 500 more to Connecticut. However, the company says they are committed to staying in New York, but has yet to determine a location. Real estate analysts say Manhattan's financial district will be rebuilt for practical reasons.
[John Utt, Salomon Smith Barney:] There's a brain trust market. You know if you go to New Jersey, you lose all the people from Long Island and West Chester, likewise if you go to any other markets. This market is very central for people in the financial industry and I think it will always be.
[Pilgrim:] Some companies have stayed in Manhattan. Merrill Lynch has moved employees to mid-town from downtown Manhattan and the company has begun to move more than half their 9,000 employee back into the World Financial Center.
[Vale Roeding, Office Builders Magazine:] It's a place where you can easily have eight or nine meetings in a day and move from one meeting to the next face-to-face and do business and that's very important for many businesses.
[Pilgrim:] Lehman Brothers is committed to Manhattan, setting up its new world headquarters here in mid-town Manhattan and another office on Park Avenue. The rebuilding of lower Manhattan may take years. The transportation systems are still very damaged. There are millions of square feet of empty office space which won't be rented anytime soon. But most analysts say with economic recovery, boom times will come back to the financial district Jan.
[Hopkins:] It's hard to get to those meetings on Wall Street these days.
[Pilgrim:] Well these days the transportation system is still not functioning.
[Hopkins:] Thanks, Kitty Pilgrim. The number of dead or missing from the September 11 attacks appears to be a lot less than earlier thought. Original estimates at one point totaled more than 6,000. Now New York City puts that number closer to 3,700. Peter Viles has the story.
[Peter Viles, Cnn Correspondent:] How many really died at ground zero. Two months ago, city officials were saying at least 5,000 or 6,000 and many feared the final number would be much higher. This was the Mayor of New York back on September 17.
[Rudolph Giuliani, New York City Mayor:] The total that we now have that we have recorded 5,422 missing people. We have 201 confirmed dead. We've identified 135 and we have 66 that have not yet been identified.
[Viles:] But as the weeks have passed, that official estimate of the dead and missing has steadily dropped with each daily update from City Hall. This week it fell below 4,000. Today it fell below 3,700. City officials now say their original list was full of mistakes and duplications. Among the more common employers that reported employees missing when, in fact, they were on vacation or not at work that day. Other nations that similarly made high initial estimates of the missing from their countries and duplicate missing persons reports.
[Giuliani:] Ninety percent of it is attributable to foreign nationals that were reported as missing, sometimes several times with slightly different names. They turned out to not have been at the World Trade Center. Maybe it's not 90 percent. Maybe that makes up 70 to 80 percent of it. Another 10 to 20 percent is just duplication.
[Viles:] It is not entirely clear why the process of verifying the list is taking so long. The city has never released the list to the news media, citing confidentiality concerns, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which provides disaster relief, says Washington is relying entirely on the city to tally the dead.
[Hopkins:] Peter, we should point out that fewer victims though are a good thing.
[Viles:] Right.
[Hopkins:] It means that a lot of people survived.
[Viles:] Right, there's this undeniably terrific news. It doesn't really help comfort those who have lost somebody or know somebody who's lost, but this is great news. We thought as many as 6,000 or 7,000 people are dead. Now we know the number's roughly half that and still falling.
[Hopkins:] Yes. Thank you, Peter Viles. And coming up on MONEYLINE, the Taliban agrees to surrender Kunduz but vows to fight to the death in Kandahar. We'll have the latest war developments. We'll also report on holiday travelers and whether the September 11 attacks are keeping more people at home. And we'll tell you how one rental car company is thriving while many of its rivals are stuck in reverse.