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To: John Pitera who wrote (73121)11/2/1999 9:09:00 AM
From: bill meehan  Read Replies (4) | Respond to of 86076
 
All: That mutt FleaBay has crashed again. Zaire must have better tech infrastructure. What's this, the sixth time since the proclamation that it would never crash again? Sign me up for Internet telephone service immediately. <g>



To: John Pitera who wrote (73121)11/2/1999 9:28:00 AM
From: Henry Volquardsen  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 86076
 
John,

not to be picky but if you don't know what happened you can't say it can happen anywhere. thats just a knee jerk response with no thought behind it.

fwiw my speculating with friends about what may have happened, based on what we know regarding the individuals involved, have centered on what we feel are a couple of possibilities. These are areas I am very familiar with. My feeling is very strong that it can not happen anywhere. I am directly familiar with three organizations and how they protect against such errors.

But there is one thing about this that makes me curious. Why was it that it was something that the auditors found? If it is something esoteric like a mispriced basis or a badly constructed arbitrage auditors aren't equipped to spot those. That is something an experienced trader needs to evaluate. If it is something that an auditor can catch then it is generally bad data input, either intentionally or accidently. But given that in a large bank lots of traders trade in each product class, especially the ones involved here, if this was something an auditor could catch why didn't it impact the entire system and involve more traders than just the one? One possible inference is that somehow these trades resided in a seperate system. That is not all that common. Again this is just uninformed and perhaps irresponsible speculation on my part but it is a logic question that struck me as curious.