Wall Street's finest were given a stark reality check Monday. Although the financial crisis is deep, and concerns over the 'Swine flu' are growing, Wall Streeters were taken back to the tragic events of September 11th yesterday, as a huge low-flying airplane swooped close by the site of the World Trade Center, panicking workers who thought that they were being subjected to another terrorist attack.

One banker told Here Is The City: 'I was in the office above Battery Park and I saw this huge airplane pass close-by on at least two occasions. We feared the worse. Panic set in immediately, and we headed for the exits'. Reuters reports that staff at Goldman, Merrill and several other Wall Street firms evacuated the area, and thousands of people filled the streets of lower Manhattan. Calls to 911 are said to have jammed the phone lines.

In the end, it was all a false alarm. The airplane was, in fact, a 747 used by President Obama (which was escorted by F-16 fighter jets). The mission ? Just to get some decent photos of the plane! New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was incandescent: 'The good news is that it was nothing more than an inconsiderate, badly conceived and insensitive photo op with the taxpayer's money. They (the Defence Department) should know how sensitive people would be if they had low-flying planes down around the World Trade Center site'.

Louis Caldera, director of The White House Military Office, took responsibility for the affair, which was classified as secret and kept on a 'need-to-know' basis. Mayor Bloomberg, Wall Street workers and locals apparently weren't important enough to be told in advance.

One wag later told Here Is The City: 'Someone told us that it was just Air Force One, but that only made matters worse. Several of us still wouldn't go back to the office, as we were worried that Obama was in the cockpit, ready to take pot shots at big bonus bankers!'.

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