K Street

This article was published by GQ China in June 2012.

To read the full article in Chinese, visit my Flickr site. If I get an English translation, I will post it also.

What if the Internet breaks?

This article was originally published by MSN Money, on Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009.

The 40-year-old system might be vulnerable to technical collapse and cyberattack, which could cause widespread chaos in fields from banking to health care to government.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

When your Internet service goes down, it's at best an inconvenience. If you rely on it for business, it can quickly cost you money.

So imagine: What happens if the Internet breaks?

Picture people wandering the streets lost without GPS or maps on their iPhones, unable to pay for food or other goods with a simple swipe of a card.

Companies would have to resort to faxes and phone calls instead of e-mail; they'd quickly reach capacity and be unable to function. Credit cards wouldn't work; stores and hospitals would run short of supplies. Even electrical power to our homes could be disrupted.

"It would be a mess," said Dave Marcus, the director of security research for McAfee. "You would be taking businesses that were designed to do all their point-of-sale and financial transactions through the Internet and going back to pen and paper and taking checks in a car to the bank. People would lose their minds."

On the 40th anniversary of the first transmission over the earliest version of the Internet, it's more than an idle question to examine the network's fragility. It's been more than 20 years since the last systemwide overhaul, and Internet infrastructure is still based on 1970s ideas about computer networks.

Headline-making outages of popular Web sites such as YouTube and Twitter merely hint at the damage a full-blown failure could wreak. The Internet protocols that allow computers to communicate in networks have infiltrated every sector of our economy.

"The Internet has moved from being a toy or ornament to something that's central to our economy," said James Lewis, a senior fellow at CSIS, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. "We've automated all these processes, which makes our economy much more efficient, which means cheap. But it also means we're now dependent."

What $2 Gas Means to You

This article was originally published by Msn.com on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008.

The cost of driving has plunged since gasoline topped $4 a gallon in July. But if fuel is cheaper, why are airfares still so high? And can you lock in today's low prices?

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

Falling gas prices offer a glimmer of hope amid the relentless bad news about the U.S. economy.

The nationwide average for a gallon of regular was $1.90 on Monday. Drivers in Kansas City, Mo., are enjoying what looks to be the nation's cheapest fuel at the moment, rapidly approaching $1.40 a gallon.

A $1 drop in the price of gas puts about $1,250 a year back into a typical family's wallet, said Scott Bernstein, the president of the nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology, and prices have fallen twice that much since their $4.11 peak in July. They're even a buck below where they were last Thanksgiving. "It's good news for cash out of pocket," Bernstein said.

The biggest winners? Poor and middle-class households that spend a disproportionate share of their incomes on energy.

"Those are the folks who are the most stretched, and in percentage terms, they'll get the biggest benefit," said Gus Faucher, the director of macroeconomics at Moody's Economy.com.

The respite at the pump buoyed consumer confidence in November despite persistent fears about a recession and job losses. "When gas prices went up, consumers really pulled back," said Dianne Kremer, an analyst at BIGresearch, a consumer research company.

Futures Trading Pit Is Birthplace of Oil Prices

This article was originally published by Newhouse News Service on Thursday, May 4, 2006.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2006 Newhouse News Service

Raymond Carbone blinked in wonder at the electronic display ringing the New York Mercantile Exchange's stadium-like trading floor.

Crude oil futures were closing at a record $75.17 per barrel, up a whopping $3 in just a matter of hours.

As a trader for Paramount Options, he is getting used to the feeling. It has become common for oil prices to climb on Friday afternoons before the markets close for the weekend.

On this day, April 21, traders on the Nymex floor were worried Nigerian rebels would attack an oil field or worse, the U.S. would bomb Iran. That would mean a jolt to the world's petroleum supply and mind-boggling run-ups in oil prices.

They know the key to trading is staying ahead of the curve, so they furiously bought futures that would mean big bucks if prices rose which had the self-fulfilling effect of driving up prices. Barring an international crisis over the weekend, they'd sell when they returned to work.

A fellow trader leaned over to Carbone. "If Iran is not a smoldering heap by Monday, we're going lower," he predicted.

Any economics student knows prices are determined by supply and demand. When more oil is extracted from the ground or refined into gasoline, prices fall. When millions of Chinese workers start trading in their bicycles for automobiles, prices rise.

But lately, the energy markets have become defined by something more powerful: fear.

With oil supply stretched drum-tight, any little disruption can make prices swell or collapse. Futures traders live in the heart of the beast, risking hundreds of thousands of dollars on a comment by a Saudi Arabian oil minister or a meteorologist's prediction about the path of a storm.

As a result, the impact of people like Carbone on the lives of average Americans has never been greater. More so than big oil companies, filling stations and world leaders, it's the guys making cryptic hand gestures in the trading pit who tell the world what oil should cost.

As Enron Trial Begins, Houston Has Moved On

This article was originally published by Newhouse News Service on Thursday, January 26, 2006.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2006 Newhouse News Service

HOUSTON -- Nobody ever said Houstonians dream small.

The city of 2 million is the nation's fourth-largest, home to the world's biggest medical center and a theater district with more seats than any in the U.S. outside New York. Its port ranks first in the country in international commerce.

A strategic plan developed by a local booster group names 10 "world cities" led by London, Paris, New York and Tokyo. "Houston must be on this list by 2015," the Greater Houston Partnership proclaims.

These days, it's almost hard to recall or maybe people here just prefer to forget that a company named Enron once crystallized all the giant, go-go dreams of a city on the rise.

Amid the Internet mania of the late 1990s, Enron was touted as a new breed of energy company, one that understood technology and trading and could transcend the physical limitations of natural resources. The buzz was that Enron would reinvent Houston as the world energy capital for the 21st century, immune from rising and falling fortunes tied to the price of crude oil.

Then Enron became a symbol of something bigger: the accounting scandals that would rip through Corporate America, prompting one of the largest bankruptcies ever in 2001, along with a revolution in oversight and the sight of chief executives in handcuffs.

Investors across the country lost billions as the value of Enron stock plummeted to zero. Wherever Enron had operations, customers and workers were affected, from India to Oregon, where the company owned Portland General Electric.

Starting Monday, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, the two executives prosecutors say were ultimately responsible for the fraud at Enron, go on trial in a nondescript federal courthouse just six blocks from their former office tower. The trial, which could last four months, is sure to reopen old wounds, titillate the curious and perhaps provide some closure at long last.

"Ken Lay was one of the genuine heroes of Houston, and Enron was one of the shining beacons of the city," said Stephen Klineberg, a sociology professor at Rice University here. "There is still a residual of deep anger, betrayal, a sense of outrage over Enron, which is stronger in Houston than anywhere in the country."