Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Zipper Accidents Read Free

program. But due to what was later deemed a “software error” on her computer, her zip code was entered into the amount box on the check. Result: She donated $93,447. When Nunn, an innkeeper from Paso Robles, California, realized the error two weeks later, she asked for Zoo to You to return her money. But they’d already spent more than half of it. (The check had cleared the bank because Nunn and her husband, Tom, had recently sold some property and deposited the proceeds.) The nonprofit paid back $30,000, and then a little more over the next few years, but nothing came after 2006. Seeing no other choice, the Nunns sued. In 2009, they were awarded a settlement reported as “somewhere in the middle.”
    JUST SAY NO
    The Florida House of Representatives voted down a law to widen government-paid health services in 1990. The bill was rejected by a single vote, that of Representative Mike Langton. Or, more accurately, of his 12-year-old son. Langton stepped away to make a phone call, leaving the boy to play at his desk on the House floor. The bill came up for a vote, and the younger Langton fiddled around with the electronic voting device and accidentally cast a no vote. The elder Langton had intended to vote yes.

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THE ROGUE TRADER
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    I n 1992 a British commodities trader named Nick Leeson moved to Singapore to manage futures markets for Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in the United Kingdom. Leeson, then only in his mid-20s, was given a great deal of responsibility—and a salary to match—by the bank, and lived it up in Singapore. Leeson was banned from a fancy cricket club for shouting a racial slur. He also spent a night in jail after a booze-fueled mooning spree.
    Eager to fund his increasingly lavish lifestyle, Leeson began making risky investments on behalf of Barings. Initially, they paid off, netting him a large bonus on top of his annual salary because he earned millions for the bank. Then his luck changed. As his losses began to mount, he attempted to hide them in an “error account” (which are typically used by traders to correct mistakes) which he labeled “88888” (8 is a lucky number in Chinese numerology). Now a chief trader with Barings, Leeson exploited his new title to conceal a rapidly expanding negative cash flow.
    At the end of 1992, the error account contained £2 million (about $1.32 million) worth of Leeson’s mistakes. That amount blazed to an astonishing £208 million ($137 million) by Christmas 1994. The young trader’s house of cards came crashingdown when he made a series of overly optimistic bets on the Japanese stock market on January 16, 1995. An earthquake struck Kobe the following morning, sending markets across Asia, and Leeson’s investments, into a tailspin. Leeson fled.
     
    “THERE WAS NO WAY THE BANK COULD COVER HIS LOSSES OF $1.3 BILLION.”
    Leeson’s carelessness quickly brought Barings to the brink of collapse. There was no way the bank could cover his losses of $1.3 billion. While the media began predicting the imminent demise of the bank, an international manhunt was on. Rumor hounds speculated that Leeson had zoomed off to another Asian nation or that he was sailing the high seas on a private yacht. Actually, he was holed up at the five-star Regent Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. Leeson and his wife later attempted to flee to Britain, but he was nabbed at the Frankfurt Airport in Germany on March 2.
    By then, Barings had been declared insolvent. It was eventually sold to ING, a Dutch banking and insurance firm, for the meager sum of a single pound, bringing a somber end to more than 230 years of banking history.
    Leeson spent more than three and a half years in a Singapore prison but was released in 1999 after being diagnosed with colon cancer. Leeson eventually bounced back. He managed to beat cancer, remarried, and these days he lectures at business conventions on the topic of “corporate responsibility.”

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ZERO TOLERANCE
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    F eet ‘n’ meat.