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The Fed Is Down

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Re: The Fed Is Down

#41

Post by dragontamer »

jerry1979 wrote: post #40
Meekro wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but people constructed a cleavage between the Fed and the US Govt because they thought we shouldn't trust democracy with money creation.

The proper role of the US Government and Money has been under debate ever since Hamilton was appointed Treasury Secretary under George Washington. (EDIT: actually, even earlier than that, but the country didn't exist yet...)

Jefferson wanted one system, Hamilton wanted another. And the two sides have been arguing for the past 200+ years. Sometimes, the central bank appears, sometimes it disappears. Then silver+gold, then removal of the silver standard (gold-only standard), then etc. etc. etc.

The Revolutionary War required money and bonds. Immediately upon the end of that war came the question of how to organize and pay those loans. Should it be held by the states? Or by the national government? Should a central bank even exist, or is a loose collection of banks good enough? Should there be a national currency, or should the States make their own currency? The Continental Congress's dollar was hit severely by inflation: losing 99% of its value in just a decade or so. Not a big deal: most Americans used Spanish Pesos back then due to their reliable silver weight.

The money issue was front-and-center at the birth of this country. Lots of debate and discussion (and duels!!) occurred over the issue. Arguing about money (literally to death) is a proud American tradition.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#42

Post by capableweb »

tfehring wrote: post #29
capableweb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Would be interested in seeing the 99.9%ile execution time for BTC vs FedACH transactions

You mean like account to account transactions? Doesn't ACH transactions take "up to 3 business days" or something silly like that? I can't really find any average numbers either as none of the data is being made public.

The transactions speed for one block in Bitcoin has been at max ~30 minutes, you might require up to N amount of blocks depending on your use case. So 10 blocks (safe) would be 5 hours, available 24/7 (granted you have internet access).

Re: The Fed Is Down

#43

Post by tibbydudeza »

We used to send/receive magnetic tapes via plane for interbank settlements since our data center was located in a different province to all of the other major banks.

Now there is a real-time settlement system for the entire country.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#44

Post by toomim »

dragontamer wrote: post #2

https://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-pers... A good time to remind people that the USA's money-transfer system (aka: ACH) is a giant Rube-Goldberg machine involving FTP transfers of specially formatted files. So it sounds like the Fed's FTP server is down?? Or something like that?

Fedwire is not ACH. Those are different systems.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedwire

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACH_Network

Fedwire is a much faster, more modern system than ACH. You can only access it if you are a bank, though. ACH is available to anyone, but it's old and uses FTP.

There are also a faster modernized next-day and same-day versions of ACH available as of the last few years. I haven't checked out their protocols, though, to see if they still use FTP.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#45

Post by cout »

efficax wrote: post #34
dragontamer wrote: post #2

https://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-pers... A good time to remind people that the USA's money-transfer system (aka: ACH) is a giant Rube-Goldberg machine involving FTP transfers of specially formatted files. So it sounds like the Fed's FTP server is down?? Or something like that?

Some of the first software I ever wrote for pay was a daily shell script that pgp encrypted an ACH batch and sent it from one financial institution to another over a dedicated frame-link, via FTP. This was over 20 years ago! Can't believe it's still the same.

Sounds like bliss! Twenty years ago I was working on a project that received financial data through a Y-cable connected to a printer port. One day, we stopped getting data and could not figure out why. Turns out the printer had run out of paper.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#46

Post by trident5000 »

umeshunni wrote: post #37
kemofo wrote: post #33

The irony of name "Federal Reserve" is that there is nothing Federal about it. The Fed is a completely autonomous private organization which controls the United States money supply.

That's an adorable meme that crypto-bros like to tweet, but really they are actually an agency of the federal government and answerable to Congress. From https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm Who owns the Federal Reserve? The Federal Reserve System is not "owned" by anyone. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 by the Federal Reserve Act to serve as the nation's central bank. The Board of Governors in…

lol "crypto-bros" that claim has been around way longer than crypto has been popular. I get the crypto hate since its taking big tech power away and your jobs. Good luck.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#47

Post by fl0wenol »

kemofo wrote: post #33

The irony of name "Federal Reserve" is that there is nothing Federal about it. The Fed is a completely autonomous private organization which controls the United States money supply.

Look, kid, so it's not a cabinet level department in the executive branch or anything.

It's little PCAOB, and a little Post Office. Point being it's not autonomous nor private.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#49

Post by avereveard »

dragontamer wrote: post #2

https://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-pers... A good time to remind people that the USA's money-transfer system (aka: ACH) is a giant Rube-Goldberg machine involving FTP transfers of specially formatted files. So it sounds like the Fed's FTP server is down?? Or something like that?

> FTP transfers of specially formatted files.

there's nothing wrong with that, at least it isn't fake-rest, and most other delivery technology are proprietary anyway.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#50

Post by goodluckchuck »

umeshunni wrote: post #37
kemofo wrote: post #33

The irony of name "Federal Reserve" is that there is nothing Federal about it. The Fed is a completely autonomous private organization which controls the United States money supply.

That's an adorable meme that crypto-bros like to tweet, but really they are actually an agency of the federal government and answerable to Congress. From https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm Who owns the Federal Reserve? The Federal Reserve System is not "owned" by anyone. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 by the Federal Reserve Act to serve as the nation's central bank. The Board of Governors in…

I think it's fair to question the wisdom (and legality) of agencies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_Un...) that are "independent" of the constitution's separation of powers.

The constitution vests Judicial power in an independent judiciary, but provides that the POTUS shall be elected and that executive power shall be vested in him/her... and that legislative power shall be vested in Congress, with Representatives and Senators elected by the people.

To say that there are agencies that are simply outside of that system... it seems to fly in the face of the basic things that kids learn in Elementary school.

The Department of Defense (aka military) takes their orders from the POTUS / Commander in Chief. We should freak if the military went rogue and decided to invade a country without approval. Yet, we're supposed to want other executive departments to act without regard to the wishes of the elected president?

> [The FED] is an agency of the federal government and reports to and is directly accountable to the Congress.

I mean, it sounds as if they're claiming to be a Legislative Branch agency.

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