July 8, 2015, Be Afraid
As you know, American national policy is that Paranoia is Patriotic [TM]. Today, and really the last few days, are truly worthy of the old adage, "Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid." Not over the official horsesh*t, like ISIS Islamic State ISIL, but over, well, you know, the world coming apart at the seams.
(I'd personally blame that water-stealer Tom Selleck, but that's just me.)
Item: the Greek PM has, shortly after sacking the only grownup in his government Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, gone back to the EU finance people begging for a new three year loan, without discussing any specific terms of "reforms" that are supposedly warranted. Evidently, he called the snap "yes/no" referendum on the previous bailout terms hoping that the people he cares about (that would be "the rich") would carry the day and vote to keep the euro, austerity be damned... but, of course, it went the other way, and these things just, you know... sometimes don't work out... Meanwhile his country has an influx-of-refugees crisis brewing as well... oy... or should I say, Oxi...
Item: the Chinese stock market has collapsed, down around a third in just two or three weeks... and the nosedive seems to be continuing despite evasive action by Chinese regulators,
That would seem to be a basis for some concern in American finance. Except... no one could trade, because...
Item: the New York Stock Exchange had a still-unexplained "computer glitch" that suspended all floor trading for over three hours of the trading day today. Naturally, a cyber-attack is absolutely out of the question.
Just as it's out of the question that any kind of cyber-security problem was responsible for extensive outages that grounded all United Airlines flights for a while or shuttered the Wall Street Journal's web operations for a while.
No, of course not. It's not as if this country or its financial institutions have any enemies, now is it? Then again, why is it so hard to imagine that the technical infrastructure even of our most vaunted financial institutions (and a major airline) aren't suffering the same kind of starvation for maintenance and upgrading as the plain old physical infrastructure in the rest of the country, as every ounce of financial lifeblood that can be sucked by the proverbial vampire squid is drained from this economy, even if it means Wall Street is quite literally cannibalizing resources to pay its mandarins their Christmas bonuses, even if said resources would otherwise be necessary to sustain itself as an ongoing venture. Good times.
Then again... maybe it's that cyber-attack thing.
Don't know. Don't care. We got trouble. Right here in New York City.