It may be just coincidence but the week Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams, arrived in Wall Street, shares fell and the analysts warned that "the seven-year raging bull market may be coming to an end".
Why the market should be scared of the Armani-clad revolutionary is not clear. By the way, he laughs off the Armani jokes but keeps his jacket on so it is hard to see the label.
Straight off the plane from Dublin he headed to Fifth Avenue and the headquarters of the American Irish Historical Society with its wood panelling and busts and portraits of Irish patriots and scholars.
Standing beside the bronze statue of Edmund Burke, hero of Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien, the Sinn Fein leader defended the Good Friday agreement to an audience which included the former Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance.
Adams joked grimly that some Irish republicans might see the agreement as a "crucifixion" but he preferred to see it as the prelude to a resurrection which will bring about a united Ireland "where I hope to grow old gracefully".
He slid past a question about why he was going the next day to the New York Stock Exchange on this visit and went on about Sinn Fein's "ongoing diplomatic mission" in the US and how the party press officer, Rita O'Hare, would be taking over the Washington office from Mairead Keane later this summer.
Mr Adams said: "I see my invitation to Wall Street as another demonstration of how far the Irish peace process has touched on every aspect of American life and awakened interest in Ireland's future." He urged senior financiers and investors to invest especially in West Belfast.
Then it was back down Fifth Avenue, past Central Park, on a balmy late afternoon to the Plaza Hotel where a huge tricolour hung over the entrance. The stretch limos came and went and the tuxedos and evening gowns and pearls alighted.
Dress was informal, however, in the Baroque Room where for $250 you could eat shrimp and drink cocktails or beer and listen to Mr Adams and Irish music. About 400 supporters crowded the room which has a plaque on the wall saying that "occupancy by more than 350 persons is dangerous and unlawful".
Northern Ireland at peace is still dangerous, Mr Adams told the audience. He had been stopped by "armed men" on the day of the referendum and "they were not IRA volunteers". He had just been told by phone from Ireland that the British army had been shooting around Crossmaglen.
It was time for demilitarisation, he said to applause as he banged a plastic bullet on the rostrum. He had nothing against the New York Police Department - "they have been very nice to me so far" he acknowledged, nodding at his security detail - but if they had killed 10,000 New Yorkers while working with "right-wing death squads" over the past 30 years what would Americans say?
Yet that was the equivalent of what the RUC had done in Northern Ireland with its 1.5 million population. The new police force would need young Irish nationalists and republicans in its ranks.
Larry Downes, director of Friends of Sinn Fein in New York and organiser of the fund-raisers, introduced press officer, Rita O'Hare, as a "legendary Sinn Fein leader". He asked media to leave after Mr Adams had spoken and given a brief press conference at the end of the room where he could hardly be heard over the din of supporters. That was fair enough. We had had our chance to "work the room" as Larry said and even eat the odd shrimp.
That morning, Maureen Dowd in her New York Times column, headed "The Green Panther", started off: "If only Leonard Bernstein could see it - Gerry Adams in Armani from Macy's with all New York society babes chasing after him. The late conductor would truly appreciate the Radical Chic transformation of the Sinn Fein leader as he makes his US victory lap this week."
That's a bit of an exaggeration. With all due respects to the matrons in the Baroque Room, only Maureen would call them "society babes" although some of them did "chase after" the bearded hero dubbed "Ireland's Black Panther" by Vanity Fair. But he got more hugs from red-faced men than women.
Ms Dowd compared the lionising of Gerry Adams this week with the way Tom Wolfe "skewered the New York elite in the 1960s who were feting Black Panthers, feeding them little Roquefort cheese morsels off silver trays held by uniformed maids".
Well, for the record, I only saw cheddar squares and no uniformed maids.
"Now", comments Ms Dowd, "Washington, New York and Hollywood are caught up in Irish terrorist chic".
Outside the Plaza, a handful of decidedly unchic demonstrators like a rumpled Republican Sinn Fein councillor, Joe O'Neill, from Sligo and a T-shirted John McDonagh, presenter of a local station, Radio Free Eireann, were protesting against what they see as Sinn Fein's sell-out of a united Ireland.
"I never thought I'd see the day when Republicans would be going into Stormont and help run it and be on the British payroll which is what is going on right now with Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein," complained Mr McDonagh as his two bored small daughters pulled at him.
Mr McDonagh says that he would represent only a "very small" section of Irish-American opinion just now in the aftermath of the Good Friday agreement "but even Eamon de Valera started out small".
Does he support violence against the agreement? "I am supporting the people who go out there and do attacks on the British government and get arrested."
He will be doing "fund raising for the families of the two people caught on Saturday night outside Dundalk going into the Six Counties."
Meanwhile, the triumphal progress of the Black or Green Panther - take your choice - continued. He had meetings with the editorial boards of the New York Times and Newsday, a visit to the floor of the Stock Exchange and another fund raiser at $1000 a head in the Windows on the World restaurant on the top of the World Trade Centre.
And in Washington, yesterday, it was a visit to the White House and a chat with President Clinton.
But he is human like the rest of us. While Maureen Dowd was interviewing him outside Sinn Fein headquarters on the Falls Road, "he took off his sandals and greens socks to put balm on a wasp bite he got while hill walking". Armani and sandals and green socks? A fashion co-ordinator is urgently needed.