The Malaysian stock exchange had to stop trading yesterday after a computer glitch shut down the whole operation.

Furious dealers were predicting economic doom and woe when the market's computer experts get around to turning the machines off and turning it on again. Apparently the problem was caused by a dodgy hard-drive that failed.

The market's Chief Executive Yusli Mohamed Yusoff admitted the crash was the worst in the exchange's history. Yusli said the technical
error caused the shut down, and not higher trading volumes. He said this sort of thing will happen from time to time, its part of the business.

Well other than the fact that there appeared to be no back-up or methods of by-passing a faulty hard-drive within seconds of the crash, he is probably right.