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Federal Reserve Risks Collapse Re: Risk of Internet collapse grows

  • From: Sean Donelan
  • Date: Thu Nov 28 21:12:36 2002

On Thu, 28 Nov 2002 [email protected] wrote:
> That said a few things should be kept in mind with academic work.  The
> time from when work is done until it appears in publication is quite
> legthy, especially when peer reviewed (the Grubesic et al article was
> peer reviewed).  I saw his paper presented in the Fall of 2001, which
> means he probably did the research in the spring of 2001, and the
> latest data available was Boardwatch 2000.  so, you end with a lag in
> Internet time that seems horrendous.  One of the problems with

The paper would have the same problems in 2000.  It starts with bad
assumptions.  Age doesn't improve bad assumptions.

Suppose I wrote an academic paper about the design of the Federal
Reserve Banking System.  After carefull analysis of the map at
http://www.federalreserve.gov/otherfrb.htm (street addresses available
at http://www.federalreserve.gov/fraddress.htm) I write a fully footnoted
paper that the Federal Reserve system is vulnerable to the destruction
of the board in Washington DC and twelve banks in Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis,
Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas and San Francisco.  The US banking
system would collapse, ATMs would stop, paychecks wouldn't get cashed,
checks couldn't be cleared, etc.  I would miss Alan Greenspan, but that's
not how the US banking system works.

The Federal Reserve system does have vulnerabilities.  So does the
Internet (and the post office, and the telephone network, and ...)
But misunderstanding the risks and vulnerabilities is worse because
it diverts resources away from the real ones.