NASDAQ goes offline for three hours due to 'technological problem'

I've just woken up this morning (it's 7am here in my part of Australia) to the news of a three-hour shutdown of NASDAQ. Yes, a three-hour shutdown to trading in NASDAQ securities, which is massive news.

NASDAQ pegged the issue on an 'unexplained technological problem' and resumed trading at 3:25pm EDT, after a 3-hour, 11-minute shutdown of trading in US companies' stocks. The shutdown is the largest in recent history. Sal Arnuk, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading in Chatnam, New Jersey said: "Any brokerage firm gets paid by executing orders. So yes, we are frustrated, and this hurts us, it hurts the market and it hurts public confidence."

The exchange blamed the issue with distributing stock price quotes for the shutdown, with a source close to the matter describing the problem as a "data feed issue" reports Reuters. Ok, now let's talk serious for a little bit, because a "technical issue", in my opinion, doesn't just happen to NASDAQ.

Firstly, President Obama met with Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke and other financial regulators in a closed-door meeting at the White House just days ago. The people in the room were very important to the financial world, with the bums on seats including Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, the Comptroller of the Currency, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and the chairmen of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., National Credit Union Administration, and Securities and Exchange Commission.

I do subscribe to "conspiracy" theories, but as time progresses, I seem to be proven right time and time again. I'm not pushing anything here, but it just seems odd that President Obama meets with Ben Bernanke of all people, and a slew of financial regulators and days later NASDAQ goes down for over 3 hours.

Are we looking at a hacking attempt that was successful? If so, did they know about it? Are we looking at an overall bigger problem that is only starting to emerge? You won't read this type of "nonsense" on any other mainstream site, so please do comment with your thoughts.