Anyone who\’s ever seen a Terminator movie knows that civilization ended when a computer system called \”Skynet\” came alive and tried to terminate the human race by starting a nuclear apocalypse. After last week\’s \”flash crash\” on Wall Street, they might have wondered if Skynet wasn\’t working on a financial apocalypse instead.
We still don\’t know what happened more than a week later, and a new SEC study will probably raise more questions than it answers. Here\’s what we do know: Wall Street has become such a high-speed, high-tech gambling house that it can be plunged into chaos without anybody having a clue what\’s happening or the wherewithal to prevent it. \”Real time\” – where the effects of ultrafast computer events are perceived at human speed – is never less \”real\” than it is where Wall Street is concerned.
As a reggae rapper named Big Youth once said, \”If you ride like lightning you\’ll crash like thunder.\”
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