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To: Enigma who wrote (46679)	1/5/2000 8:57:00 AM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 116764

Yet another opinion: Y2K DAY FOUR - LOOKS LIKE INFLATION by Master Key author Ken Welch Tuesday, January 4, 2000 Today is the day that programmers across the globe will be looking forward to a good stiff drink or two at the end of the day. Yesterday was a madhouse in countless computer rooms, and today will only be worse. It's the revenge of the nonessential systems, and the law of forgotten dependencies. Few people realize how, in the average business, one set of programs feed data to another, and another, while at the same time picking up information from files generated yesterday, last week, or last year by other systems. All too often at least one of these links is forgotten until a programming change in one area suddenly bites back in another unexpected one. In some shops, programmers spend enough time with this kind of crisis all year long, that the cost in dollars and lost productivity is significant. If it gets too bad, you will often see a drastic overhaul in the DP management and staff, or the company itself begins to go downhill. Y2K is multiplying this problem dramatically. A typical problem appeared in New Mexico yesterday, when the state found it could not issue drivers' licenses Monday morning. A bit of Y2K "workaround" code was removed from another, different set of programs and the forgotten or obscure dependency showed up elsewhere. Programmers are pretty sharp people. Generally, they can get a fix in pretty fast. But the need for fixes is multiplying rapidly, and a temporary fix is rarely a permanent one. All too often one fix calls for another, and another... Internet services are not immune to this sort of problem, by the way, so it seems reasonable to expect that we will see more sites unvailable for a while, or times when our ISP doesn't answer. While I believe the global economy is going to take a tremendous hit from exactly this sort of problem, the lack of news makes this difficult to prove. This is not entirely due to the one-voice news management that works so hard to shape public perception. In fact, most private companies view their computer difficulties as private problems and certainly no reason to call the newspaper. And if your trucks aren't rolling, or your pipeline is not pumping, then it's going to impact investors, and contracts, and you turn it over to your legal department first. An important key indicator will be the reopening of Gold markets today. Yesterday (Monday) a significant hit in the bond market telegraphed a strong inflation warning from those who are in a position to know. A rise in the price of gold, signaling a loss in the value of paper currency, would be an important confirmation. Naturally, plenty of folks who are relieved that we got throught the actual date change safely will be selling. If, over the next few weeks, buying pressure wins out and the price begins to rise again, I would consider that to be "handwriting on the wall". One of the most common questions from people preparing for Y2K chaos was whether the value of paper dollars would go up or down in a destabilised economy. Since the value of artificial currencies always declines, inflation seemed a sure bet in the long run. But the near term seemed totally dependent on how great the Y2K hit would be. If so many people are out of work that dollars become truly scarce, their value might well go up. Overshadowing this was the fact that long term inflationary policies must sooner or later come home to roost. One factor is that for several decades the U.S. has managed to export its inflation to other countries, rather than taking(cont) kenwelch.com