Our "Flash Crash" Economy

By Lowell Ponte

On May 6, 2010, the New York Stock Exchange suffered what came to be called the "Flash Crash," when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted unexpectedly by nearly 1,000 points in only minutes. A single Sell order valued at approximately $4.1 billion purportedly set off a cascade of computerized buy-and-sell programs around the world that are designed to respond immediately, and without consulting human beings, to key changes in market prices. As each major trading computer reacted, it could have triggered programmed reactions in similar computers. Some want to believe that enough circuit breakers have been added to stock trading to prevent an economy-shattering crash like the one that cost traders more than a trillion dollars in only a few minutes five years ago. But a violent sell-off in stocks on February 29, 2012 was in its own way even more frightening – because evidence suggests that it was driven by a powerful intelligence that was not human. [more...]