Fed Is Silent on Doomsday Book, a Blueprint for Fighting Crises

The Doomsday Book, as it happens, is not a book. It is a collection of documents maintained by the New York Fed’s legal department.

The contents include “an extensive legal history of Federal Reserve lending activities,” and memos on subjects that deal with the Fed’s authority to make loans to municipalities and restructure debts. There is no comparable collection in Washington. The New York Fed is the central bank’s firefighting department.