Stock Market Derailment Today Shows Perverse Power Of High-Tech Traders

I'm reading Scott Patterson's book about the rise of computer-and-math-driven stock trading - - The Quants - - and it helps explain what the heck took place in the markets today.

Too many exotic high-tech formulations, too many really-really-really smart (mostly) guys have programmed a worldwide network of super-computers that can panic the markets and make them electronically to behave completely irrationally.

Which is ironic, since these new Masters of the Universe - - including physicists and other technicians outside of traditional economics or finance backgrounds - - are using their brains and computers and corporate platforms to search out what Patterson calls "The Truth," or the Holy Grail of market control and thus infinite profit.

These are arrogant and deluded people with too much power. Today they cost people around the globe billions, trillions, perhaps.

And not for the first time.