Page 44 of the PDF has a good overview of what this document is intended to be.
Putting "Doomsday book" in the context of crisis management explains why this document exists. Basically, they don't want to be in the middle of a crisis and have legal uncertainties delay their ability to take action.
This PDF is not the book. It is an introduction/summary of changes and a table of contents (TOC). The sample agreements are not included. The letter makes clear that FRBNY is actually not subject to the FOIA. I wonder if they charged for the service.
The presence of these agreements referred to in the TOC suggests that after a "doomsday" event, the FRBNY lawyers expect that other legal entities will still be entering into agreements. One HN comment muses about the lack of a functioning judiciary after this "doomsday". But without one how would such agreements be enforced. What would be the point of providing sample agreements if a doomsday event means agreements can no longer be enforced because the mechanism for enforcing them no longer exists.
Really? They could hardly have picked a worse name; the Doomsday Book is, very famously, a register of who owns what. It has absolutely nothing to do with emergency response or crisis management.
But the document that the name implies it should be, a register of who owns what, is not at all an unlikely thing for the Federal Reserve Bank to have.
It is admittedly the same word written in Middle English, but I think context+spelling is enough to distinguish it.
Or maybe you're referring to the modern novels which are titled "Doomsday book"?
For the record, when you misspell it as you insist on doing, the top hit is the correct spelling with a link to the correct version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book. Actually pretty much every top hit is the correct spelling, which should give you the idea your misspelling is just that, a misspelling.
Here's the Grammarist entry on the difference: https://grammarist.com/usage/doomsday-vs-domesday/
That should make it clear to you.
Instead of doubling down on your ignorance you could choose to learn when presented new knowledge.
Yes, but unfortunately it doesn't much explain what the contents are like. Would be great to get an laymen-readable summary of this from an LLM.
The point is that when exceptional measures are needed, you want to know how far you can go, without it coming back to you in the months afterwards.
It's a bit like InfoSec cyber incident playbooks: if customer data is being corrupted, can the production server be shut down? how bad does it need to be before the downtime no longer outweighs the corruption? who can take the decision?
If you don't spell that out in advance, you may find yourself in a situation where you lose time unnecessarily.
And then getting sued six ways from sunday over it, years later when the crisis mood had faded and the help-people-any-way-we-can vibes were thoroughly forgotten. Time to make sure no good deed goes unpunished!
Yeah. This document makes a LOT of sense.
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2025/01/07/internet-archive-way...
It is foolishness masquerading as virtue. I used to be a donor, but no more, as this was an unforced error. The IA is in danger because the IA management was dumb.
I don’t believe in copyright, personally, and I’ve been an avid pirate of every type of media since I got on the internet at 9.6kbps, but to think that Big Content won’t sue whenever and however they can is simply naïve.
The theory was that the courts would find it to be fair use. Which isn't a crazy theory at all because making exceptions for exceptional circumstances is exactly the sort of things courts do, and fair use is exactly the sort of thing that gives them the latitude to do it if they want to.
IA's issue is that they're librarians and look at things like librarians do. If people lose access to books, is that an emergency? It could sometimes be a matter of life and death -- people need some information or something bad will happen and now they don't have access to it -- but that's kind of abstract and it's not as visceral. People understand kicking down a door to prevent someone from electrocuting themselves better than they understand that the same thing can happen if people lose access to the information needed to prevent it. So to a librarian, of course that's an emergency.
And then the other side of that is, what are you balancing it against? Some temporary copies being made of books that libraries all over have already paid for and have in their collections, and only for the duration of the pandemic? That's not a ridiculous trade off, that's completely reasonable. The libraries bought the books and the patrons read them, same as it ever was. In a temporary emergency, how much does it matter that the accounting is completely perfect rather than the plausible approximation you get based on assuming that before they knew there would be a pandemic, libraries had purchased books in proportion to how much demand there would be for them? Has it even been proved that a single book was simultaneously lent out more times by IA than there were copies of it on the shelves in locked down libraries everywhere?
That's not a crazy argument. The problem is, it doesn't feel like an emergency anymore. Worse, there was a lot of overreach during COVID, and many people are now of the sense that much of the response was excessive. And then you get a conflation between "shutting down every library might have been an overreaction" and "given that libraries were forcibly shut down, lending books in a different way was temporarily justifiable" and the people making the second argument get painted with the negative sentiment derived from the first by Monday morning quarterbacks.
If they'd been advancing a test case, they would have done what they did and then--when confronted by rightsholders--stopped while the courts deliberated. That asks the question while managing the downside. Instead, IA dialled its rhetoric to eleven, thereby turning what could have been a measured legal contest into a bet-the-farm Hail Mary.
Consider what would happen if they did that.
First, this was happening during a pandemic. Emergency happening right now. If you stop doing it at this point, not only do you fail your patrons when they need you, you're undermining your own argument that this is actually an emergency that justifies doing this.
Second, if you stop, do they even sue you? If they don't, you don't even get your test case.
Third, if they do sue you, what does it matter if you were doing it for a month vs. a year? If they hit you with the absurd fictional damages numbers in some of the copyright statutes and you lose, bankrupt is bankrupt.
Did the emergency argument ever hold legal water? How many actual librarians did the IA consult in crafting its programme?
> if you stop, do they even sue you
Injunction. Or at least, let smarter legal minds weigh in. (And actual librarians.)
> what does it matter if you were doing it for a month vs. a year?
Damages. It also shows goodwill, which could have influenced not only judges by IA's allies (who largely abandoned it).
IA was arrogant throughout the lawsuit, and it showed in their library partners often publicly rebuking them.
It's whatever the courts say it is. Fair use is very squishy. Nobody knows until there is a case.
> How many actual librarians did the IA consult in crafting its programme?
They are actual librarians.
> Injunction.
If you voluntarily stop they don't need to file for an injunction, they can just drop the case and then there is nothing for you to appeal.
> Damages.
What's the difference between a billion dollars and a trillion dollars when you don't have a billion dollars?
> Going straight from controlled digital lending to free for all was totally unnecessary when the first hadn't been tested.
They'd been doing controlled digital lending for a good while and nobody sued them. To get a test case somebody has to file a lawsuit. Maybe it shouldn't work that way but "courts don't issue advisory opinions" isn't something IA made up.
> IA was arrogant throughout the lawsuit, and it showed in their library partners often publicly rebuking them.
Issuing a statement that amounts to "please don't sue us" isn't really indicative of much other than that they know they'd need to budget for a bunch of lawyers if they want to get involved and they don't.
(Publishers can be parasites, but if you're playing with the big boys you have to follow the rules)
It's also unlikely courts etc would completely disappear even far into an actual "Doomsday" crisis. Hell the IRS has plans in place on how to collect taxes post nuclear apocalypse.
So sure people hate the IRS, but codified tax collection is the single most important function of modern government. Without that you don’t have private property or free markets just warlords arbitrarily seizing property which destroys whatever is left of society very quickly.
Complete societal collapse is outside their purview because they depend on there to be an economy to manage which ceases to meaningfully exist at certain points on the Doomsday scale.
I think the tax system, in its current state, is an illusion of providing a just system when what it really does is turns a country of free people into wage slaves working for overlords (people with money).
Instead what’s going on is the system is failing to live up to your ideals, but Democracy isn’t based on any one persons idealistic vision. Instead it’s a compromise between many fundamentally incompatible ideals, as are all institutions it creates. Government is quite literally working as intended, because it’s the result of intentional actions by individuals. You may disagree with a law, regulation, court case, etc but remember someone wrote it.
> It will take something more than a nuclear attack to wipe out taxpayers' obligations to the Internal Revenue Service.
> An addition to the Internal Revenue Manual, which is supposed to guide the conduct of all I.R.S. employees, declares that if the bomb is dropped, ''operations will be concentrated on collecting the taxes which will produce the greater revenue yield.''
I think we all tend to have poorly calibrated mental models of this because coverage of war tends to focus on the heaviest action and worst of the devastation.
I don't mean to downplay how awful that can be, or how far the effects can reverberate (even generations later), but like... the vast majority of people still go about their daily lives, doing their usual jobs, doing the mundane things, even having fun, supply chains and infrastructure and institutions seem to be quite resilient, etc. Locally and individually, everything can change in an instant in combat (even then, most people walk away from that and continue their lives), but nationally things can keep rolling along as war drags on much more slowly than we all might expect or hope.
So I have little doubt that the IRS would keep doing its thing, and tax returns would need to be filed (albeit maybe with extended deadlines), even in the wake of a nuclear attack. I suppose the question is how much do things unravel in a scenario of nuclear counter-attack, and counter-counter-attack, etc. for which we have no historical precedent to think about.
When you consider how the US funded 20+ years of warfare post-911, it’s both fascinating and terrifying, especially when you consider the long term effects of “financial meth” in terms of asset bubble, excluding the American aristocracy from taxes, and structural deficits.
But my main focus was on the use of the Comic Sans font on page 1.
The only thing an independent central bank is independent from, is from the democratic will.
That's exactly how we got here, in the precipice of a financial crisis that everyone is pretending not to see so we can keep the ponzi scheme running a bit more.
The people have no understanding of a lot of other stuff. That's why we use a REPRESENTATIVE democracy system, not a direct one. Is it perfect? not.
It makes sense. Just as you don’t want the state sweeping bridge tolls into the governments general fund, you don’t want the whims of the executive futzing with money.
What is the TLDR on why it is called 'Doomsday'?
The “Doomsday Book” is a compendium of legal opinions, in some cases stretching back decades, that explore the legal limits of the Federal Reserve in the event of a financial crisis.
I mean, you bring up a disaster recovery plan for companies, but is it REALLY a "disaster"?
> The book is a living document that records pivotal decisions made during times of financial distress. It played a crucial role in then New York Fed President Timothy Geithner’s decision to rescue Bear Stearns from bankruptcy in 2008.
Economic system failure runbook.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sun-shines-on-new-york-fed-doom... | https://archive.today/YbgG7
https://www.crisesnotes.com/the-new-york-federal-reserves-do...
Isn't it great we have a massive private entity in control of the financial system that pleasantly reminds you that it is not accountable to government laws, and by extension is not accountable to the people ("A government of the people")
https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm
> 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 Washington, D.C., is an agency of the federal government and reports to and is directly accountable to the Congress.
> Some observers mistakenly consider the Federal Reserve to be a private entity because the Reserve Banks are organized similarly to private corporations. For instance, each of the 12 Reserve Banks operates within its own particular geographic area, or District, of the United States, and each is separately incorporated and has its own board of directors. Commercial banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System hold stock in their District's Reserve Bank. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. In fact, the Reserve Banks are required by law to transfer net earnings to the U.S. Treasury, after providing for all necessary expenses of the Reserve Banks, legally required dividend payments, and maintaining a limited balance in a surplus fund.
Going purely off memory here, I recall audits implying this may not actually be happening as legally required. It was back when Ron Paul was making a big deal about it though, I can't remember the specifics so I'm bringing it up to invite discussion.
There is zero evidence the Fed hasn't been paying the Treasury properly and a lot of audit evidence it has been.
The Fed isn’t pocketing change owed to the Treasury. It hasn’t properly owed anything on account of having shrunk its balance sheet by trillions of dollars [2].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/fed-says-official-net-neg...
and this entire discussion about "government vs private" just completely neglects the widely used concept of orphaned entities, as if they don't exist
false dilemma
No, it means the FRBs have legal shareholders. (The Fed per se doesn't pay dividends.) The Treasury pays interest, that doesn't mean it's owned by bondholders.
We could easily re-write statute so the Fed doesn't pay dividends (it would become interest on reserves), they're an anachronism from the days when the Fed had to compete to induce membership. But that wouldn't do anything practical and it also wouldn't satisfy the conspiracy theorists, so it's not really in anyone's interest to bother with.
> are there explicit constraints on "limited" balances
No, though it's maintained at an amount equal to banks' paid-in capital [1]. Broadly speaking, it's another anachronism.
If you want to know about monetary policy, that’s FOIA’able. If you want to FOIA the FRB’s trades so you can front run them, that’s not allowed. (Similarly, you can FOIA the Department of Education. You can’t FOIA Sally Mae.)
As if anything that operates at the speed of FOIA would be useful for front running. Maybe if it was for some future action, but even that would be months out of date when you finally get a response.
What are you basing this on? There was a scandal several years ago when the order of transactions protocol leaked. If you now that X transaction systematically happens after Y, and you see X, you know Y is coming.
While I appreciate your desire for more accountability in our financial system, I feel this framing can be interpreted as needlessly alarmist. Although the NY Fed is not subject to FOIA —- because, as written, it excludes them —- they are of course subject to US law in general. Congress (and, by extension, the people) may pass laws to regulate them as they wish.
I know US courts have ruled that they are "private corporations". However, that's really a technical legal definition of "private" vs "government" under US law.
In a broader, globally applicable sense of "government"-versus-"private": they were created by Congress, they have special legal powers granted to them by Congress. Although they have private "shareholders" – nationally chartered banks are required by law to join one of the Federal Reserve Banks, and state chartered banks are permitted to if they desire and meet certain conditions – these private shareholders don't have the kind of power that shareholders have in a genuine private corporation. Although they get to vote for seats on the board, they don't get to set strategic direction or make major decisions, those are dictated to them from above. A body created by the government which you are legally required to join isn't really "private" just because it gives you some rather limited say in its running.
It is actually a bit like "corporatism" in fascist Italy – in which the government created "corporations" (a bit like trade associations) for each industry, which the employers in that industry legally had to join, and in which they could vote for its governing board, but in practice the government called the shots – except just for banks.
The Fed is part of the state. Unambiguously.
FRB New York is its interface with the private sector, analogous to Fannie Mae or the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The third result is from the St Louis Fed, a non-technical explanation of this https://www.stlouisfed.org/in-plain-english/who-owns-the-fed....
Everyone should read at least the first few chapters of "The Creature from Jekyll Island" to understand how much money (power) they have.
This is nonsense. The President and Congress control the Fed. And nobody can knowledgeably claim, today, that its banking members (legally, its shareholders) are more powerful than America’s non-bank financial institutions (e.g. Blackrock or Brookfield).
The greatest boon our billionaire class could inherit is a politically-controlled Fed. It’s why one of any autocrat’s first moves is bringing the central bank under their control.
I made a post earlier detailing the mechanism they use to extract the wealth from us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42621878
Instead I am saving in a money with fixed issuance, that people can't just print out of thin air. It's proof of work, like gold, but digital and with a capped supply.
If you don't understand, I'm afraid I don't have the time to explain it to you.
what is the alternative exactly? money created by god?
like no duh the economy & money system was created out of thin air. we created all this shit out of thin air.
created by putting in work of equal value, you know, like that one form of money that has lasted for millenia, as opposed to these fiat tokens that always fail.
> like no duh the economy & money system was created out of thin air. we created all this shit out of thin air.
One side of the economy was created out of thin air - the money. The other half - goods and services - were created through work. Sound like a fair system? Or a con trick?
Keep working for the tokens dude, and the banks will keep creating them out of thin air until you realise what they're doing.
So what's your alternative? Refuse to work unless you're paid in gold? Refuse to work and go on welfare? Refuse to work or eat? Become a banker and print your own tokens? What?
What banking system doesn't do this?
Ones with steps in between don't count.
Brazil's banking system prints reals out of thin air. But that's better, because they're real, says so in the name :)
This is also nonsense, though less so.
Money is created by private banks through lending. The government gets a cut, but that comes through taxation. Money creation is complicated, but it seems like every year someone watches a YouTube video about inflation and deduces, with zero further thought, that it must be a conspiracy.
Exactly. Every single dollar was created from thin air, as a "loan".
> it seems like every year someone watches a YouTube video about inflation and deduces, with zero further thought, that it must be a conspiracy.
I've been studying and researching this for years.
Not quite. Minted currency isn’t created from a loan. Neither is fiscal spending.
On the other side of the spectrum, money is destroyed through taxation (by the state) and repayment of debts and defaults (privately).
The monetary hypothesis of income inequality is overly simplistic. It supposes our tax, trade and funding policies are all dictated by monetary policy, which is obviously nonsense. (That or our tax, trade and social spending policies have no effect on inequality. Which is obviously stupid.)
It is an easily-digested hypothesis. We like those, particularly when the alternative is reading lots of arcane monetary financial texts.
Monetarily speaking, the government creates the money when it spends it. The loan then (and optionally) removes a similar amount of money from the system.
This is an enormous power, so we try to legally limit the government in how it can do this. (If we removed the Fed's independence and put it under the Treasury, the Treasury could just add numbers to the bank accounts of the government's employees and vendors. This is analogous to its minting power. We separate the Treasury and the Fed in part to fracture this power.)
I forgot one more creation/destruction mechanism above: the Fed's open-market operations. When the Fed buys assets, it creates money. When it sells them, it destroys money.
EDIT: Getting a lot of hate on this comment so allow me to clarify what I meant.
In the US we have a Constitutional Republic meaning elected representatives write the laws. People are not voting directly on laws and issues (on a federal level). The parent comment said that "The People decided this" but that's not an accurate statement. Congress decided this regardless of what people actually wanted. In fact, the public was largely divided on whether they wanted a Federal reserve during this time.
Also known as, "Five people with an IQ of 90 outvoting four people with an IQ of 110," or "One person in Iowa canceling two votes in California."
It is a highly idiosyncratic design decision in one democracy. It is not at all functionally necessary to America's system, and it's certainly not necessary to any other, as proven by its conspicuous absence from said democratic systems.
Five stupid people outvoting four dumb people is a natural outcome in every democratic system. One person outvoting two based on geographic location is not a natural outcome in every democratic system.
It's not that hard to understand if you take off your ideology blinkers for a moment and read the words in front of you.
If you have a point to make, make it.
You offered two traits of "democracy"
1. 5 low IQ voters outvote 4 high IQ votes
2. 1 voter in geography X can outvote 2 voters in geography Y
Trait 1 is a necessary feature of a democracy.
Trait 2 is not a necessary feature of a democracy.
You placing the two together in a list to describe "Democracy" is a category error.
Trait 2 is an idiosyncratic design feature of exactly one democracy, and it is not necessary to either this democracy in particular or to democracies in general.
You're right but that's not what we have in the US. We have a Constitutional Republic. Elected representatives write the laws. People are not voting directly on laws and issues (on a federal level). I'm not saying we should change it but for the parent comment to say that "The People decided this" is not an accurate statement.
That's all I meant with my comment.
> Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think
> Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.
https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba
There are several articles about the study
To put this in a less politicized analogy, everyone will tell you they want to be rich, but how many people are willing to make sacrifices to become rich? It turns out many rich people today are rich because they didn't have to make very many sacrifices, while most everyone, including minimum wage employees, can become a millionaire. Mathematically it's not all that complex.
People will tell you what they want with some internalized model that isn't representative of the realistic trade-offs that would have to be made. So in effect what people say isn't based in the reality of what they actually want.
The average voter does not uniformly express these preferences.
They’re the majority. Almost every voter puts pocketbook issues near the top of their list, but not so far up that they’re willing to be civically active about it unless it’s a crisis. Herego, we spend most of our non-crisis time on non-pocketbook issues.
Divide et impera.
By design? Or because it's hard? You really think the sole thing keeping us from having more for less is conspiracy?
There is plenty of evidence happiness is, in part, relative. I’m not convinced there aren’t voters who would rather be a little poorer than better off but not as much as that other group.
> easier to create disruption than consensus, but the money is clearly backing disruption
I’m moderately wealthy. Split time between New York and Wyoming. It’s certainly wild that a bunch of voters in rural Pennsylvania feel strongly about lowering my taxes so long as it pisses off some liberals. If I had more resources and were more self centred, I could see myself encouraging that.
We're not in a crisis now, but people voted in the last national election as if we were, because Fox News told them that we were.
This is my problem with the “elites in control” hypothesis. It seems to rely on voters’ power existing, but being circumvented because said voters are too stupid to handle it.
You are correct (except that it need only be a subset of voters).
Now that you've done a good job of elaborating on the hypothesis, what exactly is your problem with it?
It doesn't work. Its testable predictions preclude a good amount of extant politics, including practically all populism. Elites the world over are losing in democracies because they presupposed, from afar, that they knew what their constituents wanted. Voters' interests are complex, and they can't be so easily bought.
How so?
> Elites the world over are losing in democracies because they presupposed, from afar, that they knew what their constituents wanted
Elites the world over are winning in democracies (take the US for example), which could feed into the hypothesis. Indeed, nonzero voters of these elites were easily bought.
Here’s another possible interpretation: our information environment makes people extremely vulnerable to actual bullshit in massive volume.
That is also true. People get angry and then misdirect it. But the anger is real, and it filters up through the political system when the valves aren't clogged. They aren't, not anywhere in the West. Voters across the West have essentially begun a wholesale replacement of their stable of elites. That is not what happens in an oligarchic system.
The person USAns just voted in is literally an oligarch, as is his co-president, and he has indicated that he will populate his cabinet and advisory board with still more oligarchs. His "inauguration" slush fund has already received hundreds of millions of dollars from other oligarchs to secure their place in the new oligarchy*
*: Pure or otherwise
America is tending towards an oligarchic system. (This is a history of weak democracies, historically, and a reason we were founded as a republic and not pure democracy.) That doesn't prove it currently is one. Trump's election is largely about replacing the technocratic and cultural elite with a commercial one.
Maybe that doesn't. But this study does:
> Princeton University study: Public opinion has “near-zero” impact on U.S. law.
> One thing that does have an influence? Money. While the opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America have a “statistically non-significant impact,” economic elites, business interests, and people who can afford lobbyists still carry major influence
Source: https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba
The study is from 2004. I'd say things have gotten a lot more "oligarchic" in the last 20 years, and seems like it might get even worse in the next few years
Hitler was elected, Orban was elected, Bukele was elected.
None of them emerged from oligarchic political systems.
I don't think that's what people are pointing out.
... or perhaps because you've misidentified the "elites."
Voters' interests are complex, and they can't be so easily bought.
No need to buy cattle you already own. You just herd them.
If the elites are constantly changing then the 'elites' being in power is about as threatening as the 'people' holding it.
Honestly I don't think there's a rivalry among equals in play. I think the previous "elites" slacked off on the job. What's happening now looks less like a transfer of power than a vacuum being filled.
Regardless, it is the height of absurdity to argue that the "elites" aren't in charge now. A New York billionaire teamed up with the world's wealthiest man and the country's most influential cable news network to buy the Presidency, and the rest are now lining up to pay tribute.
The other "elites," to the extent there are any, are short on ambition, short on cash, and short on media reach.
True. But this is how all depositions go. When that process is blocked is when the process stops being peaceful.
> it is the height of absurdity to argue that the "elites" aren't in charge now
Some elites are always going to be in charge. That's almost tautology. The point is there is no the elites who were in charge and are now.
> other "elites," to the extent there are any, are short on ambition, short on cash, and short on media reach
And/or. Plenty have some of those but not all, or at too stupid to know how to wield it. Point remains: we have an amorphous elite with contrasting interests who are constantly fighting because power is fractured among them.
Sure, but pro-Trump voters will tell you that they were striking a blow against the "elites." Apparently rule by elites is OK, though, as long as they believe the elites in question are on their side. It's only those other elites that are the problem.
Which goes back to my earlier point: why spend money buying votes the old-fashioned way, when a personality cult can actually be profitable?
Some other member from one of the two parties, who will continue to make decisions mostly for their rich donors?
> Princeton University study: Public opinion has “near-zero” impact on U.S. law.
> One thing that does have an influence? Money. While the opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America have a “statistically non-significant impact,” economic elites, business interests, and people who can afford lobbyists still carry major influence.
Re-run that within voting jurisdictions. What that study largely seems to reference is that local representation is, in part, a divide and conquer mechanism.
It won't be repaid by me, nor anybody in my generation (Millenial). So the world is kinda collectively assuming subsequent generations will repay. To your point, it's neither contrary-to nor aligned-with the will of the people, but seems like a massive point that people would say "i'm not responsible for"
The Fugitive Slave Act (1850) The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) The Prohibition Act (1919) The Vietnam War Draft (1960s) The Troubled Asset Relief Program (2008)
Actually, I just read your update, you've changed from making a bold (and, in my view, wrong) statement about how government is not responsive to the will of the people, to a fairly boring technical point about how a representative democracy works. I have no idea if you're just doing a motte and bailey or if you were never trying to make a bold claim in the first place...
I'll just leave my piece here, in any case: I believe that the US system of government actually works really well, and in general we tend to get laws and regulations that are based on the broad consensus of a very diverse electorate. This is a good thing. In my opinion, when most people complain about how the government doesn't work for the people, what they actually don't like is that a lot of the country disagrees with them, and that disagreement is reflected in our government.
But, maybe I'm wrong and there's some other system we can come up with that will keep a vast and diverse nation hanging together prosperously for another 250 years. Shrug.
Gun Control Legislation (e.g., Background Checks, 2013)
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, polls showed overwhelming public support (over 80%) for universal background checks. Congress failed to pass significant gun control measures despite this broad consensus.
Net Neutrality Repeal (2017)
Public opinion polls showed strong bipartisan support for net neutrality regulations. Despite this, Congress and the FCC rolled back these protections, prioritizing telecom industry interests.
Affordable Care Act (ACA) Repeal Attempts (2017)
Repeated attempts by Congress to repeal the ACA (Obamacare) were made despite consistent public support for key provisions like protections for pre-existing conditions.
Stock Trading by Members of Congress
Polls show overwhelming public support (around 70-75%) for banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks due to conflict-of-interest concerns. Yet, no significant legislation has passed to address this issue.
Net Neutrality - maybe? My read on it is that it's just too wonky of any issue for most people to actually care that much about, and polling can't really tell us much about how the electorate would lean if they actually studied it - phrasing of the survey question can probably skew things strongly one way or the other. But, maybe that's just a cop-out.
ACA - doesn't this strengthen my argument? It's popular enough that even when the Republicans had a trifecta they still couldn't repeal it, despite running on "repeal and replace"... Maybe if they had actually had a replacement ready to go, they actually would have succeeded... but they couldn't reach consensus on a replacement, so it didn't happen.
Stock trading by members of Congress - the jury is still out on this one... when did this push start, during Biden's term? If (1) public opinion stays strongly in favor of it during Trump's current term but (2) we still don't see any legislation during the next presidential term... then I would call this a mark in your favor, but not until then.
Overall, I'm still not buying your argument that our government is unresponsive to the will of the people. It's certainly not a perfect reflection of the electorate, but generally when we build consensus, we get things done... it's just that consensus is really hard to come by these days.
Have a good one my friend, thank you for engaging, I think this stuff is really important. :)
But three days later they were for it before they were against it:
https://www.astrid-online.it/static/upload/protected/GALL/GA...
On the draft, that wasn't a new law. Selective Service was probably a 1940s law. A majority didn't think the war was a bad idea until 1968 and a majority supported Nixon pretty much to the end regardless of the reimagining that hippies were ever a majority.
https://time.com/archive/6875220/a-time-louis-harris-poll-th...
It is a wonderful thing that it is independent from the government, and history has shown, across nations, that political independence of central banks is necessary to control the money supply well. Political leaders are more interested in short-term issues and have repeatedly demonstrated an inability to responsibly manage money supply issues.
We have two massive private entities in control of the entire government: our two political parties.
see e.g. Nixon v. Warner Communications, Inc. (1978): recognizing the common law right of access to judicial records but allowed the court to deny access when interests such as privacy, national security, or fair trial rights outweigh the public's interest.
Nevermind the redacted stuff. I want to know who to blame.
IE, there's a little effort to hide the significance of the document "in plain sight" here.
It seems dark today given that we know the outcome, but I'm sure at the time, Comic Sans seemed appropriate for a set of tools that they thought likely would never be used. Or maybe it indicates a certain hubris undone within about 18 months.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Well, more carbon emissions for me.
It's essentially a sophisticated crisis management playbook, similar to tech companies' incident response plans but with much higher stakes. The legal and operational complexity revealed here is truly mind-blowing
This seems both novel and somewhat concerning, as it indicates the Federal Reserve anticipates and prepares for worst-case scenarios that could severely disrupt the financial system. The very existence and continuous updating of such a manual provides a window into how the Fed thinks about and prepares for potential crises.
Yes! That's the point! You don't want to arrive at a worst-case scenario unprepared!
The US military has all sorts of files and plans on bizarre and implausible scenarios, mostly as intellectual exercises ("if we wanted to invade Canada, how would we do it?"). That doesn't imply anything about their likelihood.
It’s concerning a regulator and lender of last resort considers what happens at the precipice of last resorts?
But this book is a "Doomsday Book" because it's a book written to prepare for a day of doom. I'm not sure we can draw a strong connection between the names.
The consumer can do little to prevent such a crisis, but awareness and modest preparation are a rational response.
I think it is pretty analogous to fema preparations for catastrophies. A homeowner can't stop a pandemics or hurricane. They can have an emergency kit.
The fed responding wrongly to a crisis, even a minor one, could cause enormous pain and suffering -- think famine. I don't have the expertise or patience to actually evaluate the contents of the document, but they are definitely doing the right kind of thing here.