NYT: Origin of Wall Street’s Plunge Continues to Elude Officials

[Poll_Blind]

From the New York Times

A day after a harrowing plunge in the stock market, federal regulators were still unable on Friday to answer the one question on every investor’s mind: What caused that near panic on Wall Street?

Through the day and into the evening, officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission and other federal agencies hunted for clues amid a tangle of electronic trading records from the nation’s increasingly high-tech exchanges.

But, maddeningly, the cause or causes of the market’s wild swing remained elusive, leaving what amounts to a $1 trillion question mark hanging over the world’s largest, and most celebrated, stock market.

--snip--

The silence from Washington cast a pall over Wall Street, where shaken traders returned to their desks Friday morning hoping for quick answers. The markets remained on edge, as the uncertainty over what caused Thursday’s wild swings added to the worries over the running debt crisis in Greece.

Lots more at the link.

By the way, I want to echo what a number of people have already said here in different ways over the last few days: When the financial heart of the largest capitalist society (by weight, but not by volume) suffers an arrhythmia- and the most expert specialists are either unable or unwilling to produce a clear diagnosis as to what happened and why, or whether it will happen again, and when, then we are arguably in a deeper kind of trouble than if madmen had simply flown jets into buildings full of people.

PB

[grasswire]

1. I don't think the answer is unknowable.

I just think that the answer is unspeakable. Something like this: Someone(s) who has power to control the market at will sent a threat to those who would regulate Wall Street. I think there are some people who saw that, and got the message.

In short, someone's chain was jerked.