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

To: John Mansfield who wrote (1869)	5/17/1998 4:54:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

[HARLAN] This is again about 'mitigation' New ideasfrom Harlan Smith - very interesting! I recommend to read the whole articles. John _____ '.... The Perils of the Present Full Remediation Approach Full Remediation is at High Risk of Failure, Leading us to Individual Survivalism The reasons I strenuously object to the ideas of "individual survivalism" and "safe haven alarmism" are as follows: It focuses on abandonment of cities. Cities are not viable without the utility, communication, transportation etc. infrastructures remaining viable. A city without a very complex supporting infrastructure cannot function as a city or perhaps function to support even a small part of its normal population. This then implies that huge populations must move from the city to the country. While perhaps possible, this would be an immense logistics challenge. It is not an option at all in Europe. Without countrywide coordination, that could only be accomplished by the Federal Government and a lot of intense preparation, this concept could never work for the majority of our population. Grass roots efforts, although worthy, will just not move fast enough to cover more than a fraction of the population. It ignores the fact that our present populations depend on a highly-computer-dependent "food generation" capability, that would also have to be replaced with something very different, also creating huge logistics problems. Possible but not likely. It ignores the fact that if cities are abandoned and the teeming hordes flee to the countryside, there will be no safe haven anywhere in the continental US. It ignores the fact that all of us, and particularly those with serious medical problems, are very dependent on sophisticated medical care and abandonment of our utility infrastructure will pull the rug out from underneath our ability to maintain the capability to provide this care. It ignores the problem of providing medicines and drugs to those dependent on them for survival and/or quality of life. It does not provide a good recovery base in terms of utilities, personnel and complete repair/remediation environment to restore our infrastructure. It prematurely focuses on "contingency measures" (which are bordering on an OXYMORON with regard to Y2K) as opposed to "mitigation" which is where almost all of our energies should right now be concentrated. It ignores the fact that we must maintain a robust economy and military infrastructure to maintain protection from foreign predators. It ignores the fact that we have built a Pandora's Box of nuclear, chemical and biological hazard sites and only the presence of a vital infrastructure keeps the lid on that box. We have set ourselves up for this and we are stuck with it. In Summary: Remediation - repair it, so it will continue to function as it does now. We don't have time to complete this project. Mitigation - find weak spots and modify the infrastructure to be less brittle and more resistant to failure. Provide substitutes for elements of our infrastructure most likely to fail. (FEMA equivalent -- move populations out of the flood plane) Contingency Preparation - develop backup capability that will be used when the normal infrastructure breaks (FEMA equivalent - feed, clothe, house people after they are flooded out.) We're locked into maintaining some good semblance of our present infrastructure. Without precluding contingency preparation, the majority of our energies should be focused on "Mitigation" as that will be the easiest and most feasible method of sustaining our population and providing a recovery base to build back to our present infrastructure capabilities. We could dispense with a lot of frills for 2 or 3 years or however long it takes, but we can't turn our back on our infrastructure. We need a well-orchestrated, intensely-cooperative effort applied to "mitigation". Fleeing to the countryside is not a viable solution for the majority and likely not a solution for anyone. ... scotsystems.com

To: John Mansfield who wrote (1869)	5/24/1998 4:03:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

[YARDENI] 'The Full Monty' ' Y2K Corporate Disclosure Project On my web site, you can now access a searchable database of the Y2K disclosure statements extracted from the annual and quarterly reports filed by the S&P 500 corporations with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The basic message seems to be, "We believe that our company will be compliant, but we are worried that everyone else we depend on might not." Many managements add that while they are optimistic all will be well at the turn of the century, they admit that there is a risk that "our business could be severely disrupted." Most of the Y2K statements sound as though they were written by lawyers. I'm sure they were. The corporate lawyers' main job in this case is to protect their companies from lawsuits. Unfortunately, their parochially commendable goal is not in the best interest of the public or even their own companies. Corporations are clearly violating the spirit of SEC Legal Staff Bulletin No. 5, which advised them to avoid boilerplate and to be very specific about how Y2K might effect their business activities. In my opinion, too much vitally important information is suppressed and withheld by the gag order that lawyers are, in effect, imposing on their managements. We all need to know whether the companies we depend on will be ready in 2000. We need THE FULL MONTY! We need companies to disclose everything about their Y2K progress and risks on a quarterly basis, at a minimum. Y2K Corporate Disclosure Project GM's Disclosure. GM's 1997 annual report is an all-too-typical example of the all-too-brief Y2K disclosure that corporations are providing investors. GM's two-paragraph Y2K section does not mention that the company's CIO sees "catastrophic problems" at every plant, as noted above. The only risk disclosed to investors is that the "inability of GM or significant external interfaces of GM to adequately address Year 2000 issues could cause disruption of GM's business operations." On the other hand, "many of GM's systems are Year 2000 compliant," says the annual. Ford's 1997 annual report said it expects to be fixed by the end of 1998 and testing in 1999. More ominously, it warns that the company "has little to no control over whether its suppliers or dealers will make appropriate modifications to their systems and applications on a timely basis." If some fail to do so, Ford's "operations and financial results could be adversely affected." ... yardeni.com