Forced vacations are a fraud control

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his Bits About Money essay "Financial systems take a holiday" (originally published February 2024), prompted by a conversation with a prior guest about how even exchanging calendars between financial institutions is hard. He explains why banks run at something closer to "five twos" of uptime than Google's five nines, using Japanese banks' idiosyncratic, company-specific "Company Foundation Day" to show how a holiday can be entirely real and consequential while appearing on no official list anywhere.

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Full transcript available here: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/forced-vacations-are-a-fraud-control/

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Presenting Sponsors: Mercury & Granola

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Links:

• Source essay: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/financial-systems-take-a-holiday/
• Alex Elliott on Complex Systems: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/two-banks-cant-agree-on-fourth-grade-math/

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(01:31) Financial systems take a holiday
(03:29) What is a holiday, anyway?
(10:33) Fun operational consequences of holidays
(15:07) Sponsor: Mercury | Granola
(18:27) Fun operational consequences of holidays (cont’d)
(21:29) "This is crazy. Let's get rid of holidays"
(26:31) Will this change?
(27:55) Wrap