Nerd imperialism: Why did Apple crash?

As the MSM was essentially calling for an Egyptian happy-face reenactment of the
love-fest with the fall of former Soviet nations and varied other “developing countries,”
Apple’s (AAPL) share price experienced a flash crash. No one seems to know why.
Possibly because the events today in the Middle East are not essentially about Egypt,
but about America. About wanting the rest of the world to be just like America.
It is a kind of nerd imperialism. The uprising, don’t you know, is the work of smartphones
and iPads, just as we were told by the glowing academic supporters here of the Iranian
uprising in 1979 that it was all because of the new Walkman technology and the ability
to hear a speech by Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris back in Iran via tiny cassette devises.
When one Canadian legislator expressed caution in a CBC interview this weekend,
she was chastised by a reporter for not showing “exuberance” for what was essentially
a military coup.

But possibly the events that shook the world this last week did not take place in
Egypt but at the CPAC conference in Washington, D.C. Renegade Libertarians Ron and
Rand Paul are now mainstream. Austrian economist Frederich Hayek is now an operational
perspective. New names enter the lexicon of everyday life: Florida Rep. Allen West
“rocks the house.” Rick Perry, governor of Texas, calls federal government an intrusive,
overbearing “monster.” As Rand Paul said in his CPAC speech this past week, the
Founding Fathers knew the difference between “a republic and a democracy.” Possibly
nature does as well.

As Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune, something happened to Apple’s share
price Thursday afternoon that has investors still scratching their heads. “The stock,
which had been sailing along near its all-time high of $360 a share, started to
drop at about 1 p.m. Then, at 1:39, it collapsed, falling from $355 to $349 in the
space of four minutes. In all, $10 billion got shaved off Apple’s market capitalization
before the stock began to recover.”

It bears a striking resemblance to the flash crash of May 6, 2010, he writes. But
that shook the entire market. This one belonged to Apple.

Nerd avatar Steve Jobs’s Apple Corp. is of vast symbolic importance to the American
tempo and temperament. It is to a generation just this year turning 65 (10,000 a
day) what General Motors was to the Eisenhower generation when Charles Wilson, president
of GM in 1953, declared before Congress that “as General Motors goes, so goes the
nation.”

Flash crashes are not acts of God. They respond to subtleties in the culture which
are kept in denial then manifest all at once, like a neurosis. Three new directions
have opened this month which will fully change America: The Ron Paul Disorder —
the CPAC convention metabolizes a new political perspective and in conjunction with
the new Congress, it legitimizes an entirely new political context; The Amy Chua
Disorder — we have seen the millennium and it is Chinese. The Chinese have arrived
and they bring back to us a work ethic. Goodbye, soccer mom mentality in which everyone
gets a little trophy, almost anyone can get a Nobel Prize and just abut anybody
can be secretary of State; and The Sarah Palin Disorder — she has hired a chief
of staff. Get ready.

Visit Mr. Quigley’s website at http://quigleyblog.blogspot.com.