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

To: C.K. Houston who wrote (625)	12/4/1997 5:03:00 PM
From: C.K. Houston	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9818

Early Year 2000 Lessons Highlight Risks Faced by Business EXCERPTS International experts are now estimating that 30% of organisations will not have all their essential systems ready for the impact of the Year 2000. [...] Some organisations, especially larger more complex ones, now realise that the problem is just too big to fix in the time available. Budgets have been drawn up by some organisations knowing that they will never be able to do all that work in time. Organisations are now advised to focus attention on the systems that support essential business processes. Businesses have also realised that they can't assume that every Year 2000 remedial plan is going to succeed. To manage their risk completely businesses are drawing up contingency plans for their remedial action plans, especially where mission critical processes are at risk. There is no way that any business can guarantee it will find every occurrence of the Year 2000 problem. Nor can a business anticipate the other problems that may occur as a result of trying to fix something. It is now clear that Year 2000 projects are actually preparatory work for Business Continuity Plans which will take us across the 1999/2000 thresh-hold. year2000.co.nz

To: C.K. Houston who wrote (625)	12/4/1997 7:24:00 PM
From: Bill Ounce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

Re: Y2K and gold prices Lots of speculation on this subject has been posted in the gold forum. Subject 15208 Personal (biased) summary: Gold is extremely complicated as an investment. Aside from it's traditional (perhaps out-dated) role as a currency, gold now acts very much like a commodity. In the last 15 years, greater market efficiencies have greatly reduced virtually all commodity prices. In addition, Central Banks hoard years of annual global gold production, which greatly distorts the supply/demand picture. Y2K has the potential to disrupt these market efficiencies gained in the past 15 years, so the price of all commodities may take off. But this is not necessarily converted into personal profits. Frequently Overlooked Risks (1) The price jump may occur only after Y2K problems leave you unable to complete profitable paper transactions. (2) You guess right, but some entity confiscates your personal commodity hoards. (3) You guess right, but your commodities hoard is quantized into size units that are not practical for trading purposes. (4) Y2K causes currencies to become worthless, but people choose something other than gold as a replacement currency. (5) You buy (expensive) rare coins, but the post-crash world views them as extravagant luxuries which reduces their value to slightly above the "melt down" value of their base metal. Lots of ways to lose. This summary is not intended as investment advice, but is a prediction of what will happen to you if you do not obtain qualified investment advice before venturing into the commodities/futures/numismatic arena. You might want to think before you jump :-)

To: C.K. Houston who wrote (625)	12/4/1997 9:19:00 PM
From: Todd J.	Respond to of 9818

Cheryl, Thanks for your input. It looks like money will be doing the talking. People are talking about gold here but as Keyes notes, silver has always had much more leverage than gold. I have read recently that the fundamentals for a silver are in place about now. It is said that mining has been behind demand for eight consecutive years now. Also, India is a major consumer and silver is hip there, if you will. (Silver jewelry) Y2k and demand might be the right combo. Thanks again. Todd