Thanks for that link. Helps me with my "shorting" strategy.
You know, I always enjoy all of these comments about "we're confident we'll be compliant", "or ready in time", or ... whatever. But, we're worried about the other guy.
Have you seen any company or country say they won't be ready in time? LOL Someone's lying. Question is "who".
From that Merrill-Lynch report
In Asia Pacific, 80% of companies are confident of their own internal compliance. The major focus of concern in the region is government-owned utilities in
Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines where high debt service requirements may have limited the amount those entities could spend to ensure compliance. There is also anxiety about how well the billing and settlement functions will perform, and as a result, some anticipate potential problems with receivables in the first half of 2000 ...
In Japan, the big change over the past year has been the government's increased efforts to enforce compliance. The government is, in fact, overseeing the infrastructure compliance process and has set an October-November deadline.
Merrill Lynch analysts believe that at this stage the available information is still too vague to form an investment strategy, especially one for identifying the likely defaulters. Our analysts advise to wait and see until more data is available in the September-November period ..
Finally, in Latin America confidence is highest in Y2K readiness in Argentina, Chile and Mexico. In some sectors, disclosure is poor so investors may assume the worst. Even though we believe that Latin America will successfully negotiate the millennium turnover, we suspect that a high level of skepticism may influence investor attitudes and actions as we approach year-end ...
[Remember - We're a GLOBAL economy. We don't function in isolation.]
Cheryl
P.S. I hope your senior citizen friends are taking some protective measures with their portfolios. Taking some cash off the table might be a good idea right now. |
