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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

The Fed is subject to FOIA [1]. (Within limits [2].) FRB New York is not.

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.)

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/foia/about_foia.htm

[2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/foia/exemptions.htm

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> If you want to FOIA the FRB’s trades so you can front run them, that’s not allowed.

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 Maybe if it was for some future action, but even that would be months out of date when you finally get a response.

> As if anything that operates at the speed of FOIA would be useful for front running

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.

All agencies have process for handling FOIA requests for issues that are often of a more serious nature than some data possibly arriving fresh enough for front running..

Congress literally exempted "information that concerns the supervision of financial institutions" from FOIA [1].

[1] https://www.foia.gov/faq.html

So the other 8 types of exemptions must exempt virtually every agency with a meaningful role, but wait, no, they don't. Agencies are expected to judge every request against these exemptions.

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