The Astonishing Story of the Federal Reserve on 9-11
The Fed in Chicago is one short block from the Sears Tower and while others around the country may not remember, Chicago was very much in fear of attack. Chicago staff decided not to shift to the back-up because they knew that DC and NY would need them and they felt the time it would take to move was not time the system could afford.
.. During the Ferguson-led Y2K emergency planning it was determined that key employees should carry two cell phones from two different providers and pre-load them with a master list of phone numbers including their key co-workers, key bank customers, banking regulators, utility service providers and the like. In many cases they had multiple numbers for specific contacts at each organization. It was this kind of planning which proved invaluable at all the Fed Banks across the country. That essential people were able to reach one another was a significant cog in the process.
.. As a point of reference, in the year preceding 9-11 the discount window averaged $200 million dollars in lending a night. On 9-11 that jerked up to $37 billion, then to $46 billion on the 12th. The thing that made this level of lending acceptable was that the need for the lending was driven not by insolvency but rather by true liquidity and this was the very sort of problem for which the Fed’s “elastic currency” capability was intended.