You're right, mainframes are huge in finance, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that the Fed uses them. I found the second link you posted to be quite baffli

You're right, mainframes are huge in finance, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that the Fed uses them. I found the second link you posted to be quite baffling; I have worked for several companies where I had to integrate newer and older systems, and I would never list "integration" as a reason to use a mainframe. Yes, it can be done, but in my experience the assumption is that the mainframe must be worked around, with all of its fixed-width EBCDIC glory.