Plymouth, Montserrat mud and lava would have been scorched and left completely non-arable by the heat of the pyroclastic flows. Plymouth was abandoned and the entire southern half of the island was declared an exclusion zone because of the continuing volcanic activity at the Soufrière Hills. The government of the island was moved to Brades, although Plymouth remains the "de jure" capital. , a new port and capital are under construction at Little Bay, on the island's northwest coast. The destruction of Plymouth caused severe economic problems for the island of Montserrat. Plymouth had been by far the largest settlement on the
Long-Term Capital Management on more traditional investment vehicles, such as mutual funds, as established by the Investment Company Act of 1940—funds which accepted stakes from 100 or fewer individuals with more than $1 million in net worth each were exempt from most of the regulations that bound other investment companies. In late 1993, Meriwether approached several "high-net-worth individuals" in an effort to secure start-up capital for Long-Term Capital Management. With the help of Merrill Lynch, LTCM secured hundreds of millions of dollars from business owners, celebrities and even private university endowments and later the Italian central bank. The bulk of the money, however,