Paul Kedrosky posted on this amazing document and it is covered on the Wall Street Journal’s Washington wire blog.  This is the transcript from the 9/13/2001 FOMC – two short days after 9/11.  If you ever wanted to understand what happens when the Federal Reserve folks get together, read this.  It not only frames the discussion in a significant historical event but provides a fascinating view of what really mattered at that point in time – from being able to place phone calls to getting the major trading exchanges back up and running.  This statement about long-term capital investment decisions got my attention:

The shock event of this past week is clearly a negative one. It is negative in the most important sense that it presumably increases the real risk premium for long-term capital investment, for fairly obvious reasons. That is, the longer-term environment for which capital investment decisions currently are being made must be perceived to be less certain and potentially of considerably more concern than one would have felt earlier.

Also, as Paul points out, Greenspan’s scenario of a more stable Middle East as a remote consequence did not pan out.  One thing that I thought was particularly omniscient is the following quote:

There is a shock; the shock wears off; there is a period of mild euphoria as the shock wears off; and then there’s a secondary negative effect. With this extraordinary outpouring of activity favorable to the United States position, we may well be looking at part of the euphoria phase.