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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: flatsville who wrote (8639)	9/12/1999 1:23:00 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

>>I would want whatever information is available<>< I would want whatever information is available, too, just on principle. I just hate not knowing anything, and I hate even more having information withheld from me. It's a visceral thing. But with data as bad as what we have with Y2K, there are risks to knowing. No information can be better than partial information. Let me give an example. (This is just a variation of my earlier blind-men-and-the-elephant point, so feel free to skip it.) If I were abducted and held blindfolded with my hands bound, and if the only information I had about my situation was that my captor had long hair or wore a nice fragrance, I would immediately zero in on that piece of information to see how it could help me escape. Maybe my mind would be concluding that this might be a woman so I might be able to overpower her or perhaps appeal to her for sympathy. Whatever. The point is that I would focus on this rather than feeling around to see if I could find a tool to free myself. There might well be a knife within reach but I wouldn't know it because I would be consumed with this one fragment about the hair or the fragrance. I might well be better off with no information because then I would brainstorm many options. In your linked article on the foreign brokerages we're told that 78 out of 650 responded to the survey and, of those 78, 22% (17) claimed to be completed. What information does that provide? We know that 61 international brokerages are probably not completed, which is 9% of the total number of brokerages. Of the 17 that claim to be completed, we know that somewhere between 0 and 17 really are. The bottom line is that somewhere between 0 and 589 (650-61) brokerages are completed and somewhere between 61 and 650 brokerages aren't. Not very useful! (Please excuse me while I go post this over on the new algebra thread.) ><g> The trouble with putting a lot of energy into half-baked information is that it distracts us from more useful activities and it makes us feel smarter or more in control than we really are. I'm coming around to the conclusion that the thread's respective perceptions of Y2K would be more appropriately discussed with our shrinks than with our outfitters or our financial advisors. Karen

To: flatsville who wrote (8639)	9/12/1999 11:29:00 PM
From: David Eddy	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9818

Flatsville - We are not arguing the accurate measurement of 75%, 90% or 99% of the work accomplished to implementation with this study This survey involves the total number of COMPLETED systems...again not the measurement of the remediation job along some continuum. The study indicates only 22% of the 14% participating foreign investment banks, clearinghouses and stock exchanges claim to have fixed, tested and implemented their systems...In other words claim to DONE. A quiz question from the 1929 market collapse & follow-on bank failures (not necessarily directly related, but that's another issue)... What was more causitive for the banks that collapsed? - withdrawals by small depositors? - withdrawals by large depositors? You've got a 50% chance of getting the answer right, so this doesn't show much of anything. So now the hard question... - when did the Federal Reserve know the answer? - David