When the World's Economy was Saved

[alfreda89]

On 9-11, it was no coincidence that the target was the Twin Towers, the heart of the economic empire that is America. We were involved with thousands of deaths, Ground Zero, an undeclared war. If the economy had collapsed with the towers, our recovery would have been agonizing. We might have taken the world banking system down with us.

But there was a man with nerves of steel in charge in Washington DC that day, and it wasn't Alan Greenspan.

And--ready for it? We thought that Y2K was at best something we'd taken care of, something that was behind us and history. Who knew that the emergency features set up for Y2K would save our economy?

We scream a lot about Wall Street. But in the aftermath 9-11, the quiet heroes of the Fed and the banking industry did their jobs like they were rebuilding Apollo 13 with the clock running.

Read on and be awed.

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

I wish I could be confident that if something similar were to happen next week, the response would be as coherent and well-organized. There was a lot of dismantling done, and a lot of changes made, between 2001 and 2008. Even in that article, I noticed that FEMA was still operating competently as of 9/11. By Katrina in 2005... not so much.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

It is a concern--the GOP has gut so much of the government. I have seen government officials quoted as saying that their response to the Ebola crisis has already stretched the CDC and foreign aid to the limit, and it is not enough to contain the crisis.

I hope for a quiet revolution this election. I hear that Ferguson, MO has gone nuts with voter registration. May they be an example.

It's true—they are stretched to the limit.

[elizabeth burton (from livejournal.com)]

Last year's sequestration—when the GOP held Congress hostage so that prearranged budget cuts would go into effect— shaved $1.5 BILLION from the NIH, which is a major source of medical research funding. They also chopped $13 million from the CDC, resulting in layoffs.

http://bit.ly/1vlDsYl