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

To: flatsville who wrote (493)	9/1/1999 10:58:00 AM
From: C.K. Houston	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 662

NYFed raises Treasuries lending limits for dealers NEW YORK, Aug 31 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said on Tuesday it will allow U.S. primary dealers to borrow a much bigger chunk of the central bank's portfolio of U.S. Treasuries, starting after the Labor Day weekend. Although the Fed did not specifically cite concern over financial markets' potential funding problems related to the Year 2000, traders said the near-doubling of the amount of Treasuries dealers can borrow daily under the Fed's System Open-Market Account (SOMA) program was likely related to Y2K fears. ``The limit per Treasury issue will be raised to 45 percent of the total (Fed's $490-billion Treasury portfolio) holdings from 25 percent, effective September 7,' a New York Fed spokesman said. The New York Fed created the SOMA program in 1969 to allow U.S. primary dealers -- the brokerage firms that deal directly with the Fed and are market-makers in U.S. government securities -- to borrow U.S. Treasuries from the central bank's portfolio overnight through bidding at daily auctions with a noon deadline. The SOMA program helps alleviate market disruptions such as the ones that may be related to scarce Treasury issues trading ``on special' or at a premium in the repo market [...] The Fed has already beefed up its cash coffers to meet any unusual surge in demand for paper money ahead of the year-end and also opened a special "don't-ask-don't-tell" discount window operation where banks will be able to borrow large amounts of funds at 150 points above the 5.25 percent Federal funds rate [...] biz.yahoo.com [Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

To: flatsville who wrote (493)	9/1/1999 12:53:00 PM
From: B.K.Myers	Respond to of 662

Would you care to give us odds on successful remediation of Japanese PCs within the next four months assuming Feilder's assessment is correct? Impossible to say. It depends on what they are using these PC for. If the PC's are stand-alone systems used for word processing, then this won't be a problem. If the PC's are used as a front-end process for their mainframe computers, then it depends on the both the front-end PC software and the mainframe software. It would also depend on what Y2K problems the PC software has. Of course, if the PC passes a "bad" date to the mainframe, then you probably will have some problems. If these problems turn out to be severe, then I would give them only a 25% of successful remediation in the remaining 4 months (just a guess). If the PC's are used for back-end processing (such as reporting), then only the output reports will be affected. This would not be a big problem. In fact, it probably won't even matter whether or not they are remediated by year-end. If the PC's pass date sensitive data to other external systems, then a Y2K problem in the PC's could have a "ripple" effect. This would require integrated testing and I don't believe that this could be accomplished in the remaining four months. Possible, but not probable. A lot would depend on whether they are using COTS software or in-house developed software. If Y2K compliant version of the COTS software is immediately available, then they shouldn't have too much of a problem installing and testing the new software by year-end. But if they are using in-house developed software with a Y2K problem, they could be in trouble. I suspect that we will be hearing more about this over the next couple of weeks. B.K.

To: flatsville who wrote (493)	9/1/1999 2:06:00 PM
From: Christine Traut	Respond to of 662

Hi flatsville: No. Not hyperventilating yet. I am contemplating the benefits of a monastic life. And going to cash. <gggg>. As to your question <B.K. or Christine--Would you care to give us odds on successful remediation of Japanese PCs within the next four months assuming Feilder's assessment is correct?> I see that B.K. has already ably replied. For what it is worth, I would tell you that most large US companies feel that they need a few months to distribute a new operating system (or major changes to an existing one). Careful IT shops have to test any changes with every single application that they run. Even if you simply went around and threw the stuff in, it still takes time to physically inventory and locate every PC in a company. B.K.'s conjecture about how PCs are used is also right on target. My concern is with PCs in small business, retail and medical applications. In many cases in the good old USofA we have tiny software companies that have put pretty critical stuff on the PC platform. The fact that people on the street continue to think that Microsoft has no Y2K issues makes me very nervous about how many PC systems have been looked at seriously - even here. Christine