Personal computers are getting faker. The percentage of counterfeit components is growing steadily, if unevenly. Fake components make PCs cheaper. The downside is declining reliability, safety and performance. Is it even possible to keep it real?

A massive crackdown at U.S. and European airports during two weeks in December yielded some 360,000 fake electronic components worth $1.3 billion, including phony Intel chips and about 40 other major brands. The raids were «www.guardian.co.uk» last Friday.

Such high-visibility busts mask the difficulty in stopping counterfeit components.

[cob:Related_Articles]The problem, in a word, is: China. Murky and Byzantine supply chains, lax enforcement of weak intellectual property laws and an outlaw manufacturing culture all contribute to widely available fake PC components mixed together with legitimate parts in the PC components supply chain.

China is the world’s leading manufacturer of, well, just about everything. And it’s also counterfeit central — more fake products of all kinds come from China than from the rest of the world combined.

The growing counterfeits problem is the dark side of the incredible cheapness of PCs these days.

The driving force is consumers and businesses who view PCs as commodities to be purchased based on price, rather than quality and reliability. Declining margins force OEMs to seek ever cheaper suppliers, which in turn seek out less expensive components. Often, the cheapest part is the fakest part.

It’s possible to buy a fully counterfeit PC and think it’s original equipment. The Alliance for Gray Market and Counterfeit Abatement (AGMA) says one in ten IT products sold is fake.

But even a computer sold legitimately by a brand-name outfit might have a counterfeit motherboard. And even if the motherboard is real, various chips and parts on that board might be fake.

Some counterfeit parts fail spectacularly — such as fake laptop or cell phone batteries that explode, catch fire and send people to the hospital. But most may simply fail prematurely, reducing overall reliability. Fake networking and other equipment may compromise security.

No company — not even the giants — can track down and verify the authenticity of every component. Testing is both extremely expensive and very time consuming. And a typical PC contains thousands of counterfeitable parts.

When we think of counterfeit components, we imagine copycat parts being manufactured. But another problem is re-labeling. When a part is upgraded to a new version, for example, unscrupulous distributors convincingly re-label the old part to look like the new one.

Sometimes huge batches of legitimately manufactured but defective parts are purchased, relabeled, then sold without the knowledge of the manufacturer.

In other cases, products are modified, then relabeled. For example, a chip might be “overclocked,” then sold as a higher-speed version.

In a few Asian countries, including China itself, counterfeit products are easier to get in some cases than the real deal. In the U.S., the most likely source for fake goods is no-name online stores that undercut everyone else in price.

Even smaller brick-and-mortar companies can unknowingly buy fake parts. But phony products, or quasi-legit products with some fake components can show up just about anywhere, including the largest electronics stores.

You can minimize the risk of buying shoddy fake PCs by always buying from a reputable company, rather than an online store you’ve never heard of or an auction site.

Be especially wary of online sources with radically lower prices than everyone else.

And don’t buy on price alone. Check for reliability ratings, which is ultimately the best evidence for the ability of a company to control its supply chain and use authentic components.

The ugly truth is that you can never be 100 percent certain that any PC you buy contains all-legitimate components. But you can minimize the risk by shopping for reliability, not just low price.

Canada’s food watchdog is warning consumers that certain chicken sandwiches sold in Quebec, Ontario and possibly Atlantic Canada are being recalled because they may be tainted with listeria monocytogenes.

Gatineau-based Les Aliments Martel Inc. is recalling the following sandwiches:

- Martel’s chicken sandwich, 160 g, UPC 0 67585 38064 4, best before date Feb. 5, 2008.
- La Maisonne sandwich wheat bread, white chicken salad, 160 g, UPC 0 78302 60089 1, best before date Jan. 25, 2008.
- La Maisonne sandwich club, white chicken salad, 240 g, UPC 0 78302 51472 3, best before date Jan. 25, 2008.

No associated illnesses have been reported.

Foods contaminated with listeria monocytogenes may not appear or smell spoiled but may cause listeriosis, the agency said.

Symptoms include high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness and nausea. Pregnant women, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems are particularly vulnerable.

Listeria monocytogenes can be found in dairy products, vegetables, fish and meat products. The bacterium can be spread by contact with a contaminated product or during food preparation.

For more information, consumers can call the Canadian Food Inspection Agencyat 1-800-442-2342.

There’s a reason Warren Buffett’s company holds more than 35 million shares of Anheuser-Busch. ()

It’s called consistency over time.

Anheuser’s annual earnings grew in seven of the past eight years, and analysts project the performance will be nine out of 10 by the end of 2009.

Anheuser-Busch receives a solid 6 in IBD’s EPS Stability Rating, which varies from 1 to 99 with 1 being the most stable.

Its dividend stability is one of the best possible.

As of Friday, the dividend yield was about 2.8%.

Although an investor can find stocks with juicer payouts, Anheuser-Busch’s dividend policy is more generous than the current yield might indicate.

As Chief Financial Officer W. Randolph Baker pointed out to IBD Friday, Anheuser-Bush has raised its dividend 31 years in a row.

If an investor bought Anheuser-Busch 15 years ago, the dividend would now be almost four times what it was then. The yield on the original investment would be 9%.

In that period, the stock price rose 230% vs. 207% for the S&P 500.

But for income investors, the dividend is the focus. Who wouldn’t like a 9% yield in today’s climate?

That’s the big plus for dividend investing. When the market is stingy to downright bearish, the income investor can collect a fat yield on a move made years ago.

Although Anheuser-Busch is a mature firm, it is not stagnant. It has a 97% interest and a 27% stake in two Chinese breweries. It plans to build another brewery in China this year.

Domestic beer makes up 75% of sales and foreign markets 7%. Making beverage cans and operating theme parks Anheuser is the second-largest theme park operator in the U.S. account for the rest.

For nearly two decades Evan Dooley quietly made a living trading commodities like wheat in his home state, Tennessee, far from the hurly-burly of Wall Street.

But on Thursday, Dooley, 40, became the talk of the financial markets when MF Global, the giant commodities brokerage, accused him of making unauthorized trades that led to $141.5 million in losses for the firm. Dooley, the firm said, wagered on wheat futures with money he did not have.

Dooley, who worked in the firms Memphis office, had bought as many as 15,000 wheat futures, the equivalent of about 10 percent of the market for these contracts for any given month, company officials said. MF Global discovered the trades early Wednesday morning and ran up the losses as it desperately unwound the positions in a volatile market.

“This is a very disappointing situation for us,” said Kevin Davis, the chief executive of MF Global, on a conference call with investors and journalists Thursday. Shares in the company plunged nearly 28 percent.

It was the second high-profile case of a single traders bad bets causing losses for a global financial firm. MF Globals troubles, however, are small compared with the multibillion-dollar hole left in Soci?t? G?n?rale after J?r?me Kerviel secretly wagered the banks money on stock futures.

Like Soci?t? G?n?rale, MF Global has an electronic system designed to prevent brokers from trading beyond their means. The French bank has said that Kerviel circumvented its controls for more than a year with a complex scheme involving computer hacking. But MF Globals safeguards failed for a simpler reason: The firm had deactivated them for certain traders, including Dooley, because the controls slowed transactions. Dooley, who is known as Brent, was dismissed by MF Global after his trades were discovered. He could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

The losses may have been exacerbated by a spell of volatility that has affected the wheat market in recent weeks, spurred by droughts that have suppressed supply even as demand spiked.

“Youve seen moves in a day that youd expect to see over a month,” Davis said, referring to the wheat market. “The size of the market has grown quite dramatically.”

Wednesday was a particularly bad day to sell off the unwanted positions. Wheat futures plunged in the morning and then spiked in the afternoon.

“Throwing someone into a lions den is about what its like,” said Vince Boddicker, manager of Farmers Trading in Mitchell, South Dakota.

Friends and colleagues said they were surprised to hear Dooleys name in the news. He grew up in a small town in central Tennessee, they said, and has spent most of his life in the state.

“I certainly wouldnt want anyone portraying him as a shady guy, because he wasnt,” said Chris Cornell, a corporate bond trader who pledged the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity with Dooley at the University of Memphis.

“He is friendly, outgoing, he was good fraternity brother. I would sure like to know the rest of the story.”

Dooley graduated from the universitys business school with a bachelors degree in finance in 1991. Former classmates said he played intramural basketball and football and held several officer titles at his fraternity.

He began his career in finance working part-time at McVean Trading and Investments, a commodities brokerage firm based in Memphis, while still an undergraduate.

“He was just an average kind of kid,” said Llewellyn Hall, the firms vice president of compliance. “He didnt leave under bad terms, or I would have remembered it.”

Dooley left McVean in 1994 and then went on to work at a half-dozen financial firms, according to regulatory filings. He had been working on commission at MF Global since November 2005, according to a company spokeswoman.

“He sort of lucked into it more than anything,” Cornell said.

James Whitehead, a partner at Shoemaker Financial, a Memphis firm, who was in Dooleys college class and fraternity, said they last spoke over breakfast two weeks ago.

Dooley had recently discussed some of the stresses that come with middle age, Whitehead said.

“I think as a businessman, family man, you go through stresses, just the stress of life,” Whitehead said. But Dooleys worries did not strike Whitehead as out of the ordinary. “Nothing that would throw up a red flag to me.”

Whitehorse’s fire chief said a blaze that destroyed a family’s home Thursday was likely caused by a compact fluorescent light bulb with a fake safety certification mark.

The owners of the house, located on Fir Street in the city’s Porter Creek subdivision,arrived athome that afternoon to find it uninhabitable because ofthe blaze.

“It’s believed that a faulty compact fluorescent light bulb was the cause of the fire. Everything’s pointing to that to be the cause,” Whitehorse fire Chief Warren Zakus told CBC News on Friday.

“We had received some information that there were some compact fluorescent light bulbs that were causing some fires. We checked all the bulbs in the house, and we did find some bulbs in the house that did match some of the ones that [the Underwriters’ Laboratories of Canada] has put an alert out for.”

An alert on the independent product-safety-testing organization’s website shows one questionable light bulb, a Globe Mini-Spiral 13-watt bulb, has a fake certification mark on it and “may pose a potential fire and electric shock hazard.”

The alert, posted in 2004, stated that the bogus light bulbs were manufactured in 2002 and 2003 by Fujian Joinluck Electronic Enterprise Co. Ltd. in China. The ULC recommends consumers with those bulbs return them to retailers immediately.

A police officer called in Thursday’s fire just after 3 p.m. PT, after seeing smoke from the house. Four fire trucks and more than a dozen firefighters responded and spent nearly four hours fighting the flames.

While they saved the two-storey structure, the house sustained fire and water damage to both floors. Zakus said nearly everything is damaged, and estimated the total loss at around $250,000.

Whitehorse RCMP are investigating the blaze.

Police are also investigating another fire in the same area Thursday night. Firefighters spent nearly three hours putting out a fire at a Maple Street home, which had three rooms damaged.

Zakus said that fire appeared to have been deliberately set. As was the case in the afternoon fire, no one was in the house when firefighters arrived.