“Gremlins.” All financial infrastructure is a patched-together collection of systems spread across multiple different firms made of multiple suborgs with vastl

“Gremlins.” All financial infrastructure is a patched-together collection of systems spread across multiple different firms made of multiple suborgs with vastly different levels of observability into and understanding of their local part of the total system. For many routine problems, the cost of having a rigorous answer to “What just happened?” is far, far greater than the dollar amount at stake in the transaction. You’d need the equivalent of a federal agency doing an after-accident investigation to make headway, at the cost of millions. So we chalk it up to gremlins and move on, for better or worse. (This is one reason why financial institutions have an operational losses budget. Sometimes the gremlins eat someone’s money. So you just charge it to Ops Losses and move on.)