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Technology Stocks : 2000: Y2K Civilized Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Christine Traut who wrote (484)	9/1/1999 8:32:00 AM
From: John Hunt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 662

Japan is the Biggest Y2K Risk in the World Today - Feilder << Japan's lack of Y2K readiness poses a serious threat to the stability of the world economy. This is the opinion of Karl W Feilder, President and CEO of Greenwich Mean Time and acknowledged world authority on the year 2000 PC problem. Currently on a conference tour of Japan, Feilder is calling for more Y2K-advanced countries to act now or they will not be able to trade with Japan next year. ``Japanese business needs to be brought to a level of Y2K understanding very quickly so that they can act against the threat Y2K poses to their economy - and, therefore, the world economy. The quickest way of doing this is to transfer other government's existing Y2K campaigns to Japan.' While the West may rightly think this is the responsibility of the Japanese government, Feilder, who has met their government representatives, says there simply isn't time to bring them to the point of understanding that breeds action. ``Most Western governments took a long time to understand what needed to be done. The UK, US, Canadian, South African and Australian governments acted very strongly when they understood that Y2K had the ability to shut their economies down if they didn't encourage business to act. Today these are the nations I rate as furthest ahead in Y2K preparation.' Feilder acknowledges that many other nations need help too, but says the case for transferring accumulated knowledge to Japan is most urgent. ``We've recently experienced the domino effect of Japanese recession and stock market fluctuation, compounded by the interdependence of the traditional keiretsu. These groups of large companies - all with strong connections to the same bank and significant cross-holdings in each other's shares - dominate Japanese business culture. I don't think anyone would argue that it is in the interests of the West to prevent their economic failure.' Feilder singles out the British, Canadian and American governments as being best placed to help and is very specific about what needs to be done. ``Acting independently, these governments need to take out full page print ads and run television and radio campaigns on behalf of their local companies that trade with Japan. They need to bring Japanese understanding up to speed by explaining that the problem is most serious at the desktop, explaining the five layers of the PC, and explaining what action they need to take at each layer.' (More details attached.) >> ... cont'd at ... biz.yahoo.com More Japan Y2K comments by Feilder.