kayshapero

Well, read on - a lot of it came in good and handy come the 9/11 attacks...

The Daily Kos has an annoying habit of hanging in the middle of each page access for me for some reason (possibly related to something I'm blocking with NoScript so this may not happen to you), but this article is worth waiting through it. One doesn't tend to think in terms of the Federal Reserve at first mention of the 9/11 crises, but apparently whilst downstairs in their Manhattan building, the staff was taking in refugees and healing the injured, sealing the building to keep out the ash, etc, and getting the cafeteria up to full time feeding of refugees, firefighters and other responders; upstairs they were busily keeping the economy from collapsing due to scared banks and other such things. And that's only the Fed and the Manhattan location; there is plenty more story from plenty other places. Anyway, here's the story:

Daily Kos
Wed Sep 10, 2014 at 07:30 PM PDT
The Astonishing Story of the Federal Reserve on 9-11

by bunnygirl60

It is impossible for me to begin to write anything about the events of 9-11 without first bowing my head and taking a moment of silence in remembrance of all those who died and the grief which still lives on in the soul of our nation. Since I will be writing here about the genuinely heroic acts it took to save the economy on that day, I should mention that 74% of all civilian casualties were from the financial community. This represented not only wonderful people (I elect to think the best of them all) but of significant expertise in some of the most esoteric areas of our monetary system. In particular the staggering loss of six hundred fifty-eight employees by the largest securities interdealer broker, Cantor Fitzgerald, sent shockwaves through the industry that were and are still being felt.

I didn’t intend to write a piece about 9-11 or to devote my Thursday spot on the Netroots Radio program The After Show to this subject. In fact, I had planned to spend this week on the thrilling topic of the discount window. It was plain old curiosity that took me to the internet to find out what the Federal Reserve did on 9-11. As it turns out, it was not an easy story to unravel and between late Sunday night when I first started reading and Tuesday night when I started writing I read several hundred pages of reports as well as the tiny amount of media reporting available. Here’s the thing I didn’t know and I’ll bet you a wheelbarrow of carrots you didn’t either, on 9-11 and the days which immediately followed, a relatively small number of people did some genuinely, physically heroic things in order to keep the economy from going off the rails and none of them were named Alan Greenspan.
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