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

To: Investor-ex! who wrote (2779)	11/1/1998 3:37:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

thanks! Here is Koskinen with some interesting stuff: ' Our last concern, and Senator [Robert] Bennett [of Utah] spoke about it this morning, is the potential for overreaction in anticipation of what might happen on January 1, 2000. As I said when I took this post in March, we're engaged in a high wire act. We need to get people around the world to take the problem seriously, but, at the same time, we don't want them to unnecessarily panic and take actions that would be counterproductive. With this problem, panic can take many forms. It's not just packing up and moving to a vacant lot in New Mexico. Much of the overreaction that could prove difficult will involve large numbers of people deciding, for one reason or another, to change their normal behavioral patterns. If 100 million Americans change anything they do in their normal pattern of economic behavior, whether it's deciding to take money out of the stock market to protect their IRAs [Individual Retirement Accounts] or show up at their gas stations in the last week of December to fill up their tanks, that will be a problem. As we all learned in the 1973 oil crisis, there's not enough gas in the pipeline to fill up everybody's tank, and if there isn't enough gas or there isn't enough canned food or if there aren't enough drugs available, you can imagine the panic that will result when people say, "See, there isn't going to be enough of everything, and there is, in fact, a great problem here." On the other hand, the American public has a lot of common sense in responding to crises. As you know, we just had another hurricane go up the East Coast, and we've gotten so nonchalant about how to deal with the fact we may not have power or telecommunications for a few days, that you can't get people to leave their houses even though they're in harm's way. We want to make sure that people have the same feeling about the Year 2000 problem. We need to be candid about where we believe disruptions are most likely to occur, but we also need to say that we don't expect earth to stop so-to-speak, as some of the Web-page writers say. We need to demonstrate that we are prepared, and that companies and the Government and others have backup and contingency plans to deal with whatever the problems are. We've gotten through other seemingly difficult situations, and we'll certainly be able to get through this one without people having to decide to buy a year's supply of anything. But the only way to do all of this is to provide the public hard information and to be transparent in what we do. As I've said, exhortations won't do it. My standing up and saying "Don't take your money out of the bank, there's no problem" will simply lead everybody to say, "I guess I better get there quick before everybody else does." People need real information so that they can make their own judgements. We're pushing all of our working partners to provide as much public information as you can about where you are, what works, what still doesn't work and, if it doesn't work, what backup plans will be put in place. I think if people are comfortable that we know what we're doing and are prepared to respond, we'll have less of a problem with panic. A final issue that depends a lot on you is how we do contingency planning. I was out with the Intelligence Agency CIRs yesterday and I told them the same thing I told our Council, which is that we're about finished with the proselytizing and organizing phase. We're moving into the monitoring and assessment phase, and we're starting to do contingency planning because ultimately we are going to move into the crisis management phase. And the Council will be responsible for coordinating the Government's response to this situation domestically and abroad. ... ncs.gov