[quanticle]

That's true, and the point that I was trying to make is that we need more of these built-in checks and assertions, even if they mean that the system isn't running at its maximum potential efficiency. I think that software development practices (especially in the financial industry) have gravitated too far towards speed (in computing and executing actions) and not enough towards safety (e.g. doing some meta-analysis and determining if the computed actions make sense given higher level trends).