The US stock and commodity exchanges break all the time.  Just google "zerohedge self help" and read some of the stories.  The major exchanges try to "hide" this kind of thing for better optics.  Bitcoin is more transparent.  

Note again that this "GoxLoop" happened around 9pm pacific time maybe a month ago.  It wasn't discussed as much because most people from the US were asleep.  Mark was on IRC (the last time this happened) and said that the loop was activated by his "security system" that goes off when someone places and huge market sell order.  The reason for his weird "security system" is to prevent a repeat of what happened several years ago when someone hacked the site and faked a market sell all the way down to zero!

Gox really needs to step up its game -- it could raise plenty of cash to fund improvements.  But this is not a conspiracy, and this is in no way unprecedented.