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So to be technically accurate, what happened in May 2010 was one marketwide flash crash, while today we had a market paralysis which was the direct result of countless isolated mini flash crashes, all of which precipitated the market from failing for the first 30 minutes of trading.

Earlier today, as AAPL stock was plummeting and had lost a whopping $75 billion in market cap, dropping as low as $92/share, CNBC's Jim Cramer pulled a rabit out of a hat, or in this case a previously undisclosed email out of his inbox. An email from AAPL CEO Tim Cook which may have well be instrument in saving AAPL some $80 billion in market cap. An email which may also have been a rather blatant Reg FD violation.

Back in July, when it started to become clear that a succession of declarations, directives, policy rate cuts, and even threats weren’t going to be enough to alleviate the pressure on Chinese equities, Beijing looked to take back the narrative by banning the use of certain undesirable phrases. On Black Monday, they were at it again.

"The hedge fund guys didn't build this country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky. They are energetic. They are very smart. But a lot of them - they are paper-pushers. They make a fortune. They pay no tax. It's ridiculous, ok?"

As the cost of insuring equity market risk (VIX) spiked higher this morning (having been broken for minutes after the open), catching up to the cost of insuring credit market risk (CDX HY) which has been screaming dead canaries for weeks, a funny thing happened to the volatility of volatility. VVIX (the estimate of the uncertainty of the cost of insuring equity risk) exploded to a level never seen before - as various ETF/hedging strategies imploded - a level twice as high as during the Lehman crisis...

Once upon a time, Ron Insana tried running a fund of funds. He failed. Then he tried working at SAC. That didn't work out either. Then, he decided to write scathing opeds in the Huffpo bashing "doomsayers." Four years later, the Fed is terrified to hike rates by 25 bps from zero while in the meantime all other central banks have joined the Fed in a global, liquidity-injecting tsunami, confirming the doomsayers were right all along. So what is ole Ron, who once upon a time used to work at CNBC up to these days? Why "managing a virtual portfolio" it would appear... which he "took to cash last Thursday."

Curious why few if any traders can actually execute any trades, whether buys or sells? The reason is that despite the relative calmness of the index prints, what is going on beneath the surface is an unprecedented wave of constant halt and unhalts, making it virutally impossible for any matching enginge to, well, match buyers and sellers.

We warned on Friday, after last week's China rout, that the market is getting ahead of itself with its expectation of a RRR-cut by China as large as 100 bps. "The risk is that there isn't one." We were spot on, because not only was there no RRR cut, but Chinese stocks plunged, with the composite tumbling as much a 9% at one point, the most since 1996 when it dropped 9.4% in a single session. The session, as profile overnight was brutal, with about 2000 stocks trading by the -10% limit down, and other markets not doing any better: CSI 300 -8.8%, ChiNext -8.1%, Shenzhen Composite -7.7%. This was the biggest Chinese rout since 2007.

But... but... pension funds are "allowed" to buy stocks. Judging by the first few minutes of trading in the first thing to open this evening on the mainland, the CSI 300 Index Futures which immediately tumbled by 4% to 3340, China's attempt to deflect attention from the fact that it did not do a 50-100 bps RRR cut is not doing too well.

Déjà-vu time!

Is it any wonder that with "personal finance experts" such as these, that the personal finances of America have never been worse?

The only question, now that stocks are back to their fair excess-liquidity implied value, is what happens next?