Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: John Mansfield who wrote (2017)	6/21/1998 1:12:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

Time magazine '....Both Sinai and Varvares are raging bulls compared with Edward Yardeni, chief economist of the investment firm Deutsche Bank Securities. Formerly one of the stock market's biggest boosters, Yardeni now thinks the Dow may give one last spasmodic twitch up to 10000 by September, then fall 30% in 1999. That, he says, would be in anticipation of a global recession starting in 2000. For the moment Yardeni sees the economy as Supertanker America, plowing strongly forward despite storms in Asia and elsewhere. But in 2000, he thinks, it could turn into Titanic America, with the computer Y2K problem playing the role of the rivets that, according to a current theory, popped when that fabled liner hit its iceberg. Computer programs generally signify years as two-digit numbers--98, for example--and tell the machine to read a 19 in front. Some programs were written long ago, and it is difficult and time consuming now to reconstruct their logic enough to rewrite them and then test and debug the new programs. And some programs are encoded onto microchips deeply embedded in the computer and almost impossible to get at. A computer that reads 2000 as 1900 will often be unable to make sense of the surrounding information and put out gibberish or crash, taking down other computers that have been fixed but interact with the faulty one. In Asia, Yardeni sees a "depression" that is just beginning. Combine the effects of that bust and the Y2K problem, he believes, and the U.S. could suffer a downturn as severe as the one triggered by the 1973-74 oil crisis. Output then fell 3.7% from peak to trough. Other board members concede that Yardeni points out real risks that could upset their far more optimistic forecasts. ... pathfinder.com