Here are four posts recalling life in the U.S. Treasury on 9/11 and afterwards

Flying Back to Treasury on 9/11: I was in a hotel room in Tokyo when the first plane hit the World Trade Center, recently sworn in as Under Secretary at Treasury…We immediately cancelled our meetings and by the next morning—still 9/11 in the United States—we were on a C-17 military jet flying back to America…When I got back, the city was on alert. DC was a logical place for another attack, and the secret service was particularly concerned about security around the White House and the adjacent buildings which included the Treasury. We planned for the worst case scenarios. We made lists of essential jobs that would have to be done if the Treasury was wiped out—running the $30 billion Exchange Stabilization Fund case we had to intervene in the currency markets was an example…. read compete post

The Financial Front in the War on Terror: Few Americans now remember that the United States launched its first post-9/11 attack on terrorists from a very unusual front—the financial front. As President George W. Bush put it, “the first shot in the war was when we started cutting … read compete post

A Morale Booster on the Financial Front Too: Anyone who has served in the military during the nearly ten years since 9/11 must feel a sense of closure with Bin Laden’s death. As Lindsay Wise writes in the Houston Chronicle “Bin Laden’s death is a dramatic morale booster… read complete post

On the New Greatest Generation: With the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 approaching people have been asking me to write about the impact of 9/11 on economic policy making in Washington, where I ran the international division of the U.S. Treasury at the time, and to …read compete post