Quite a few banks in the path of hurricane Irene were planning to get up and running quickly now that the storm has passed.

Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, both in the zone, are aiming for as close to normal operations as possible, while American Express' lower Manhattan offices likely will remain closed for day. JPMorgan's office in midtown avoided any major damage, as did the facilities of Bank of America, in New York as well as Charlotte. All the major stock exchanges have also indicated that they intend to be functional today.

The real issue is how employees make it into the office. It could be a real nightmare given the mass transit systems, which take a bit longer to get up and running than the trading systems. This in a sense is a test of the extent to which the big banks have embraced tele-work and the IT challenges to make sure it can work smoothly. Ideally, banks would be able to tell their employees to work from home, and thus avoid minimal disruption to their working days. But this assumes that banks have done the requisite work toward creating a sustainable tele-work environment.Allowing people to work from home would be ideal right now. If people try to make it to lower Manhattan, they will likely spend half their day or more in transit.

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