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A reader on Ann Barnhardt’s blog posted the following commentary:

“Regarding the tech “glitches”… they all seem to be connected to router issues. If built correctly (a big assumption in a lot of large enterprises) the loss of multiple routers should only slow traffic, not stop it. The internet itself — Internet Protocol — was based on the concept of dynamic re-routing of traffic. You probably know this: the internet was the result of DOD project to build a communications network that can survive near-complete destruction resulting from a massive nuclear exchange. The key to making it work is the network’s ability to detect missing/damaged routes and network segments and intelligently find an alternate route. In the late days of Operation Desert Storm the old Unix geeks and hackers (they of the long, silver pony tails) went ballistic with joy because their invention got its first real-world test: we had bombed, smashed, sliced, and eviscerated over 80% of the Iraqi communications interconnects and infrastructure but command and control messages were still getting through from Baghdad to Basra… albeit through strange routes that took the traffic through Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and even AT&T’s data networks before terminating at the intended end point. Traffic was delayed up to a few seconds but the messages got through.

So how does one router going down at United bring its network to its knees…. and was that an American-made Cisco or Brocade or HP or Juniper router or a Chinese made Huawei router?

You’re right… those who should care can’t understand, and those who understand already know.”

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I agree. This was no “tech glitch” .... and I suspect Miss Ann has scored another goal on the “See, I told you so” board:

The BLACK SWAN ...

“There is no bid. There. Is. No. Bid.”

So the Chinese stock market is collapsing and has gone no-bid and is being shut down, prices on the street in Greece are already being quoted in Drachma, and now the NYSE has gone no bid, and it is being blamed on a tech glitch. Riiiiiight. United Airlines, the Wall Street Journal and ZeroHedge all had simultaneous “tech glitches” too.

Ask not for whom the Black Swan honks. It honks for thee.

Here is the full version of my Economics Presentation from ARSH 2012, and I have it keyed to begin at the 2:09:40 mark, where I discussed how the markets would go no bid when the black swan event happened, and thus the urgency of getting out before that happened.

If you didn’t get out of the markets I simply cannot feel sorry for you.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=6771&v=7bA_NbYSaGM

I agree. This was no “tech glitch”

China was always going to be the trigger. They became the premier labor-intensive export economy at a time when the global economy expanded by a factor of ~2-3 (the fall of the Soviet Union, the addition of India, eastern Europe, and, of course, China itself). A great way to bring in capital, but it could never last, and they allowed corruption and faulty economic theories to create the largest "bubbular" and mis-allocated economy the world has ever seen. While the rest of the world went full retard, China trumped them all.

But, they have skills. And a massive reservoir of engineers and hackers. They may have painted themselves into a corner, and they may be facing an almost certain centrifugal collapse, but they will not go silently into the night. That is for certain.