This Weekend’s Unanswered Questions (121005)

Another installment in a nearly-regular series of mysteries and pseudo-mysteries (usually 3-4) this inquiring mind would like to have answers for (some links included may require free registration):

QUESTION 1: Should we have Senate hearings and a windfall profits tax on this critical commodity?

Hurricane-related damage has reduced its availability. It price is already well over $4 a gallon, and is expected to increase substantially.

You would think that our politicians would be demanding that something be done to stop this industry from gouging us. Actually, the reaction is the opposite (bold is mine):

Nationwide, orange-juice retail prices averaged $4.46 a gallon during the four-week period ended Oct. 1 — a 2.5 percent increase in prices from a year earlier.

….. However, prices will be able to rise only to a certain point before there’s a backlash from consumers, said Doug Bournique, executive vice president of the Indian River Citrus League.

“Will (Wilma) raise prices? Up to a point, until you get consumer resistance,” Bournique said. “You can only go so far. You don’t want to ruin the relationship with the customer base.”

In its initial forecast for the 2005-06 citrus crop before Wilma hit, the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Oct 12 predicted that Florida would produce 190 million 90-pound boxes of oranges, up 27 percent from last year’s hurricane-damaged crop of 149.6 million.

….. However, Wilma appears to have wiped out most of those gains in fruit production, officials said.

Also Monday, U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Orlando, and other officials visited a storm-damaged grapefruit grove in South Florida. Martinez said he is working on an agricultural relief package for Florida growers.

The price of orange juice is at a 7-year high (5th para at link). Why aren’t we having Senate hearings to grill Tropicana executives?

QUESTION 2: When are the interested parties going to really get after online computer scams and fraud?

This is a fine mess the computing industry has put itself in:

About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting consumers, a study says. (I believe that percentage is WAY below reality–Ed.)

Of those receiving the phony e-mails, most thought they might be from legitimate companies - seven in 10, or 70 percent, were fooled by the e-mails, said the report.

….. nearly three-quarters of those surveyed (in a study), 74 percent, use their computers for sensitive transactions such as banking, stock trading or reviewing medical information. That leaves phishers with a good chunk of Internet users to target, Platt said.

Platt said too many people still don’t have adequate computer security to guard against viruses, hackers and other threats. The study found 81 percent of home PCs lacked at least one of three critical protections - updated antivirus software, spyware protection and a secure firewall.

One promising initiative I covered earlier in the year, The Identity Theft Assistance Center (ITAC), has been virtually invisible since it supposedly went live (third item at link) at the 100 largest institutions in the country back in April. If no one knows about it, who is going to use it? In the meantime, many of those same top 100 companies are trying to turn computer fraud and identity-theft protection into a profit center. Something is seriously out of whack.

It seems to me that the longer computer makers and the financial services industry don’t go after the problems full-force, the more vulnerable they are to the mother of all class-action suits.

In the meantime, since “they” won’t do all they can to protect you, follow the steps Kim Komando suggests in her most recent USA Today column before you connect any new computer, especially a Windows-based one, to the Internet.

QUESTION 3: Is this the most expensive clerical error ever committed?

You’ll have to find a different one that cost more than $225 million to be in the running. The consequences of this error are still being felt:

TOKYO — Japan’s government rebuked the Tokyo Stock Exchange and one of the country’s biggest brokerage firms Friday after a typing error caused Mizuho Securities Co. to lose at least 27 billion yen ($225 million) on a stock trade.

The error roiled the Japanese market, while jitters over the reliability of the exchange’s trading system contributing to a 1.95 percent drop in the benchmark Nikkei 225 index Thursday.

The Nikkei rebounded 1.45 percent Friday to finish at 15,404.05, but the mishap triggered concern among some traders just a month after an embarrassing glitch at the Tokyo exchange shut down the market for almost an entire day.

The trouble began Thursday morning, when a trader at Mizuho Securities tried to sell 610,000 shares at 1 yen (less than a penny) apiece of a job recruiting firm called J-Com Co. , which was having its public debut on the exchange.

It had actually intended to sell 1 share at 610,000 yen ($5,041).

Worse still, the number of shares in Mizuho’s order was 41 times the number of J-Com’s outstanding shares, but the Tokyo Stock Exchange processed the order anyway.

Mizuho says another trader tried to cancel the order three times, but the exchange said it doesn’t cancel transactions even if they are executed on erroneous orders.

By the end of the day, Mizuho Securities — a division of the nation’s second-largest bank, Mizuho Financial Group, Inc., had lost at least 27 billion yen ($225 million). That total could rise, however, Mizuho Securities spokesman Hideki Sakuma said Friday, adding that the mishap was sparked by human error.

Japan’s Financial Services Agency, the country’s financial watchdog, began an immediate probe into what went wrong and how to prevent a repeat.

“In order to maintain the credibility of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, I very strongly want this issue to be resolved quickly,” Economy and Banking Minister Kaoru Yosano told reporters Friday. “The first thing for the Financial Services Agency to do is to determine what happened in detail. Based on that, we will decide what is needed based on the rules and regulations.”

“We need to think more about putting safety measures in place to prevent confusion,” Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters Friday.

To revise an old saying a bit: To err is human, but to really screw things up, you need a computerized system without proper controls. (Update: Scrivener links to a story that estimates the loss at $298 million, and says “You know, typing really is an underappreciated skill.”

Dec. 13 Update: Make that $335 million.