I’m all for putting the flood of fake parts under the microscope.

But I take umbrage at the phony figures of the cost of counterfeits being floated by certain trade groups.

NEDA, for instance, claims in a Business Week story this week that fake parts costs the electronics industry up to $100 billion a year. Well, many economists peg the entire value of the electronics industry at roughly $1.2 trillion, give or take a hundred billion. So by NEDA’s accounting, fake parts cost us about 8% or so of the entire annual net worth of the global market.

I ask you: Does that sound even remotely plausible? And if not, does such blatant hyperbole come across as crying “wolf,” undercutting our attempts to sound the alarm on the problem?