Comment by cryptica

It's just like it was with pen and paper... Everyone trusts what is written on the financial statement but when they come to withdraw the cash, all at once, suddenly everyone finds out that the gold isn't there.

It's the same with computer systems. The charts show something, but until enough people decide to all withdraw their money or sell their stock at the same time, nobody has any idea that the money or asset simply isn't there or nobody knows just how frothy the valuation is.

Social media and search algorithms are highly optimized to ensure that people don't sell or withdraw stuff at the same time. Modern media directs massive attention towards certain topics as a way to draw attention away from other topics which could collapse the economy.

Also, imagine a bank has a serious bug which causes millions or billions of dollars to disappear every year or creates extra illegitimate dollars. Imagine they only discover this bug after a few years of operation... How likely is it that they will report it to an authority? They didn't notice it for years, why not pretend they didn't notice it for a few MORE years... The incentive to delay the reckoning is an extremely powerful one.