Unless competitors are also planning to lower their e-mini commissions, why would IB want to lower theirs? For retail brokers (who don't care how much or how little trading you do each month), they are still pretty much the lowest out there. There is no reason in the world they would lower their commissions unless market forces required them to do so to stay competitive.
Remember about 2 years ago when IB refunded a full day's commissions (no min or max). It wasn't due to a problem, just something they were doing to thank their users and I guess get some publicity.
Depending on all the debits that occurr today that may be a great distant memory that you will be able to discuss with your collegues over an expresso. lol
Maybe they have an emergency plan for Globex crashes and hedge with SP and ND contracts. At least they must know very well what sort of crap Globex really is, because around 80% of IB´s severe technical problems might be related to the Globex system.
Each point is $50. 50% intraday margin is about $1780. Globex moved about 10 points when it was down. Am I missing something or is this roughly 500 bucks per contract. Perhaps there were a handful of liquidations. If there were, and you assume all who got liquidated went into negative cash balance and all would fail to pay their debt, do you really think the amount would be significant. Do the math, i don't think I'm sticking my head out on a limb stating that commission loss during the down time far exceeded any loss (if there even was any) due to non-performing accounts.
Anyway, with "Universal Account " (TM) - that also may hold stock positions - risk for IB might be lower than for a some futures-only broker.