Blackouts and Cascading Failures of the Global Markets
Scientific American
18 Dicembre 2008
Feedbacks in the economic network can turn local crises into global ones
The global economic crisis is akin to a power blackout. In both cases, a disturbance in one part of a complex “tightly coupled” system results in a cascade of failures through an entire network. In the case of a power blackout, a single downed power line or transient overload causes power to be shunted to another part of the grid, which in turn leads to new overloads, more shunting and ultimately to a cascade of failures that pushes a region into darkness. Similarly, in the current economic crisis, a U.S. banking emergency caused by worsening U.S. market forces has sent shock waves through the world’s financial system, causing a global banking crisis that now threatens to lead to a global economic downturn.
Cascading failures are an emergent phenomenon …
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