Friday, May 7, 2010

Fat Fingers?

Yesterday afternoon the Stock Market took a precipitous plunge. Now they are saying it was a "glitch".


They are theorizing that perhaps a trader typed in a "B" for "Billion" when he/she meant to type in a "M" for "Million". Big difference, huh?


The idea goes that someone had "fat fingers" which caused the typing error. Look at the keyboard below. How fat would your fingers have to be to type the "B" instead of the "M".


This morning I heard on the radio that the U.S. Congress is going to hold hearings to determine what actually caused the "glitch". Yeah, all those geniuses in Congress are really going to figure this out, aren't they? (Please pardon my sarcasm.)