Is there any support at all for the implication that this anecdote has any more than a humorous and coincidental relationship with the 1987 stock market crash?
I've run across this story more than once. It's amusing but also more than a little troubling if that is in fact how fragile the global financial system is.
Related are the faster-than-light stock-exchange trading orders of the past few years.
Some trades were originating out of Chicago for NY exchanges which, based on release timing of information, would have had to travel faster than light. Truth being that there's early access being offered some traders.
There are huge disasters that come of software mistakes -- but look at the story of the Therac-25 vs. this kind of story. Factual stories don't normally have punchlines.
If however many billions of dollars were actually lost due to a server rebooting at the wrong time, would it actually be possible that it remained a secret, only documented in this one humorous and totally un-sourced account?
Also note the exaggerations of the incompetence of the IBM datacenter operators.
It's an entertaining read, because it's written to be an entertaining read ("a former gnome of Zurich"?). Maybe there's some kernel of truth in there; maybe not -- but there's no way to tell now (without other, better sources) what that may be.
I've run across this story more than once. It's amusing but also more than a little troubling if that is in fact how fragile the global financial system is.