The Doomsday Book, a collection of legal opinions that describe and delineate the Federal Reserve’s ability to fight financial crises, along with a variety of related documents, has popped into public view because a group of investors suing the government over the terms of the AIG bailout say some Fed memos show that the Fed broke its own rules, the New York Times reported today. Last week, in a courtroom overlooking the White House, government lawyers took a break from defending the government against the $40 billion lawsuit, and instead pressed a judge to keep the contents under seal and to limit references to its contents by lawyers and witnesses participating in the weeks-long trial. “Of the tens of thousands of documents that we have produced in this case, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has sought to retain confidentiality because of the internal sensitivity of only this one,” a lawyer for the New York Fed, John S. Kiernan of Debevoise & Plimpton, told the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
