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The Fed Is Down

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21–30 of 79 posts

Re: The Fed Is Down

#21

https://frbservices.org/app/status/serviceStatus.do

Affected Areas: Account Services, Check 21, Check Adjustments, FedACH, FedLine Advantage, FedLine Command, FedLine Direct, FedLine Web, Fedwire Funds, Fedwire Securities, National Settlement

About 3/4 of services seem to be back up now, including ACH

Re: The Fed Is Down

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their uptime stats seem pretty reasonable to me, exceeding their target uptime in almost all cases. https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/ach...

Am I the only one surprised that some of their targets don't even have 3 nines as availability? That's some pretty crazy stuff when it comes to how serious the context is and considering the availability of cryptocurrency transactions.

Yes. That'd be quibbling over a few hours per year [1] in availability. No system can be expected to deliver 100% uptime.

I have associates involved in mortgage lending. Anyone who was waiting to close based on a wire was told to just reschedule for tomorrow.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability#Percentage_c...

Re: The Fed Is Down

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affected Areas: Account Services, Check 21, Check Adjustments, FedACH, FedLine Advantage, FedLine Command, FedLine Direct, FedLine Web, Fedwire Funds, Fedwire Securities, National Settlement

About 3/4 of services seem to be back up now, including ACH

yup. Looks like things are quickly being resolved.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#24
post #14
post #13

This is what happens when government runs areas of the economy. Private companies can go bankrupt when they get obsolete, but government agencies have massive political pull and are never dismantled. The nation that can figure out a bankruptcy process for government agencies will be the leader in future centuries.

The Federal Reserve is a private company.

It's a private company in name only. It was enacted through congress with a board of directors that are actually a federal government agency. Saying it's a private company is not even technically true.

It's gluing feathers to my iguana and calling it a bird.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#25
post #14
post #13

This is what happens when government runs areas of the economy. Private companies can go bankrupt when they get obsolete, but government agencies have massive political pull and are never dismantled. The nation that can figure out a bankruptcy process for government agencies will be the leader in future centuries.

The Federal Reserve is a private company.

It's not surprising how many people aren't aware of that. When you look at the ceremony around the chair and reports to congress, when you read Wikipedia articles, it sounds as if we have a government owned central bank when in fact we have a private entity with distributed and opaque governance which is ostensibly accountable to the congress although I've not seen congress ever act like it has any accountability for fed behavior.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#26
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't they use SFTP?

Meet the US government... Triple DES is still used for backwards compatibility in banking

The Fed is a private entity actually.

The Treasury is US Government. But the Fed is owned by the member banks. The US kinda coopted a seat at their table and Congress + President appoints the Fed head. But otherwise, the rest of the board is made up by private companies.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#27
post #11
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't they use SFTP?

Don't touch if it isn't broken? From what I've seen in other countries, you don't update protocols for this. You introduce better ones and kill the old ones once nobody used them for a while. Which might take longer than expected, because "free instant transfers" might be seen as cannibalizing the "slightly less slow expensive transfers" any given bank might have on offer.

I deal with the ACH network on a daily basis and let me tell you it IS broken. The fact that you only receive negative ack when a transaction fails, otherwise you have to pray your transaction went through is so bad it sounds like a joke.

For comparison, the third world underdeveloped country where I live has an electronic cash transfer system allowing me to send ANY amount of money in 10 minutes at most for $0.5 usd.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their uptime stats seem pretty reasonable to me, exceeding their target uptime in almost all cases. https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/ach...

Am I the only one surprised that some of their targets don't even have 3 nines as availability? That's some pretty crazy stuff when it comes to how serious the context is and considering the availability of cryptocurrency transactions.

Would be interested in seeing the 99.9%ile execution time for BTC vs FedACH transactions. The page linked in the parent comment provides statistics for "timely" processing but doesn't indicate the actual time(s) that that standard represents. My money's still on the Fed though.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meet the US government... Triple DES is still used for backwards compatibility in banking

The Fed is a private entity actually. The Treasury is US Government. But the Fed is owned by the member banks. The US kinda coopted a seat at their table and Congress + President appoints the Fed head. But otherwise, the rest of the board is made up by private companies.

Calling the Fed a private entity is really misleading. It was created by an act of Congress and its highest ranking officials, the Board of Governors, are all appointed by the President.

Yes, it shares some power with the banks it regulates (who can elect representatives), but the US government didn't "coopt a seat at the table." It built the table and had most of the seats from the start.

And it's true that member banks own stock in the Fed, but it's a super-funky kind of stock ownership. That stock can't be sold or traded, and doesn't grant the kind of voting rights one normally associates with stock ownership. It only entitles the stockholder to their share of the dividends the Fed pays every year. The Fed actually returns nearly all of its profits (something like 95%) to the US Treasury, and pays the rest as dividends to shareholder banks.

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