Matt Lauer investigates Wall Street crash: Did someone hit the wrong key on a “typewriter”

PolitiPage ^ | 05/09/10 | jeff j

[nhwingut]

Matt Lauer investigates Wall Street crash with Jim Cramer... He doesn't want to "let this go" without asking if the wrong "typewriter" key was punched.

[shadeaud]

Lauer must be sleeping with some top guys at NBC. How can such an idiot hold such a position(professional position that it). I remember when there was almost a scandal about him not having a college degree. NBC arranged for him to receive his necessary credits and walk down the ‘’runway’’ with his cap and gown(and probably a frilly thong underneath) defusing the upcoming scandal into lemonade.

[Man50D]

It was me. Sorry! Manipulating the stock market is far easier than I thought!

[library user]

Typewriter? WTF? Is this douche living in the 70s?

[KarlInOhio]

It was Obama. The only reason he switched from "million" to "billion" was because he couldn't find the TR key to go all the way to "trillion".

[Brett66]

Reminds me of Larry King a few years ago:

Larry King Admits He’s Never Used The Internet: ‘Do You Punch Little Buttons and Things?’

[Tijeras_Slim]

He’s got Jerry Killian writing memos for him.

[Free_at_last_-2001]

Was probably D^an typing up another memo...

[RobRoy]

What cracks me up about this whole thing is that it reminds me of the time I tried to make a $2600 payment to my visa and accidentally made a $260,000 payment with my online bill pay. The results were not hilarious but I did get it undone.

But to suggest that such a thing could do that to the market kicks in the old saying, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. And the claim IS extraordinary.

[penelopesire]

‘Matt Lauer investigates’ ???

ROTFLOL!!

[Big Horn]

Lauer could not investigate a box.

[torchthemummy]

It is a testament to how low our intellectual capital has swung among the citizenry that anyone would not apply commonsense and know that there would be very basic safeguards within the trading system software that would immediately flag and disallow what obviously would be an erroneous entry. Several articles since have attested to the multiple layers of protection built in to the trading software combined with a required human override at the end of the line to let such a "fat finger" mistake to actual translate to a real trade, not to mention the actual capital that would have to be proved to be on hand to "pay" for said "investment." Also needless to say that the "B" button is separated from the "M" button by the "N" button so....

You don't have to any inside market knowledge to know that if this was a simple typing error there would be protection that simply wouldn't allow it to progress. It's called commonsense, something that is disappearing slowly but surely every day.

[RobRoy]

Good thing he didn’t accidentally hit a “TR”

[giotto]

What’s so lame about the “b instead of m” explanation is that, if you were going to enter an order for one million shares of stock or whatever, you wouldn’t enter “one million.” You would enter the numeric amount, i.e., “1,000,000.” In order to enter a billion instead of a million, you would have to hit the zero key three times more than you meant to. That’s not the kind of error any kind of trader would ever make—fat fingers or not.

[Man50D]

You don't have to any inside market knowledge to know that if this was a simple typing error there would be protection that simply wouldn't allow it to progress. It's called commonsense, something that is disappearing slowly but surely every day

C'mon torch! It was me! Didn't you know the whole electronic trading system can be brought down with one keystroke from a keyboard?

[albie]

It was a “ticker tape” malfunction Matt. ~sarc

[wiggen]

Those safeguards are there and while annoying do provide a moment of pause if you type at my speed. If you’re lightening quick you can click the little box and have the order entered faster than you can double check your accuracy.
I would guess people are capable of disabling the check as well.

[opentalk]

NBC,msnbc (GE), will spin anything for this administration. Their lies are becoming more nonsensical, seems like comedy channel.

[Riflema]

Sorry, but the trading systems I have worked on do indeed allow you to enter via shortcut keys, e.g., “1m” for 1 million, “1b” for 2 billion etc. Trust me, it is way more accurate than counting keystrokes.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Matt Wower, as Brokjaw would call him.