It's only my opinion, and it don't count for much, but I consider it a defect in the market structure that permits such anomalies to occur.
The only thing Globex could do is come out with new rules stating that no trades can be executed out of range determined by the current value of the underlying index. Other than that option I think what Globex did (not breaking up the trades) was correct. If they do ever break trades, it should always be based on previously published criteria.
Clearly part of the problem is that someone apparently forgot to do any arbitrage, or at least didn't do enough of it. And perhaps that is what happened - some big institutional player just turned off their arb programs for a couple of minutes. Of course you can't blame them for anybody's 40 point loss, they're not bound by any rules that force them to participate.
Then there is IB. When I type in a stop order, I expect it to trigger at a certain price. Since there is no delay on Globex, the fact that my order would be in a queue should not matter - the execution should be instantaneous.
Looking at my T&S data, is see that the price of 1626 was hit for the first time at 11:02:38, and the first time contracts traded at a price of 1666.5 was at 11:02:57. That is 19 seconds, perhaps good enough for E*Trade, but not for a broker that claims to be direct access. Unless of course the delay was Globex' fault.
And btw, seems to me that while Rock's trading skills or his use of leverage is outside of the scope of this thread, IB execution quality certainly is not.
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