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To: JDN who wrote (26177)	1/5/1999 3:02:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 31646

'An Appeal for Y2K International Investment By Mike FletcherJanuary 5, 1999 <Picture>Many of you have been reading the columns I have submitted from the meetings I have had with governments from around the world. As you have probably gathered, most of them are coming late to the problem of the Millennium Bug, and all of them need more time and manpower to address the problem, as we all do. But above all they need money. I think we should be making a contribution. The amounts they need are not particularly large from our point of view. And yes, they would be grants, not repayable. Why do I think we should make such donations? Because they are entirely in our own interest! North America's annual export markets probably total $1.0 trillion dollars annually. If we contributed 1/100th of 1% of this amount, we would be investing $100 million dollars in making sure that our trading partners will be much better prepared than they are at present. Please note again I am suggesting an amount that is 0.0001% of our total trade. What is the likelihood that Y2K domino effects will cause that trade to drop by $100 million dollars? Extremely high. So it's worth it from that point of view alone. Now let's consider it from the point of view of employment. Think tanks like the Gartner Group are estimating that 5% of businesses worldwide will fail as a result of the Year 2000 (and I have seen much higher numbers). Let's suppose that 10% of those business collapses relate to international trade. Given the global nature of our economy I believe that this is a very conservative estimate. So if - of 1% of the 10 million small businesses in North America failed, that means 50,000 bankruptcies. With four employees each, that in turn means 200,000 jobs lost. If each unemployed person costs $7,000 per year in direct dollars, let alone the social and family costs, our national expense in the first year will be $1.4 billion dollars. Note too that the figures I have used above relate only to small and medium enterprises, not the big companies that are also bound to be affected. It wouldn't take much to double or triple that cost to our economy. We know what happened when Korea got into trouble. We know what happened when the Japanese banks started slowing down. We know what happened when the Indonesian economy started falling apart. We know the number of jobs that the "Asian Flu" has cost companies across North America and particularly on the West Coast. I'm not talking about altruism, I'm talking about self-interest. I'm not talking about protecting employment in Russia or Pakistan or Argentina, I'm talking about saving our jobs. I'm not talking about vast sums of money, I'm talking a figure of 1/100th of 1% of our total trade, I'm talking chump change This session I attended recently in Moscow is a good example. It was entirely sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), a Department of the Canadian government. Without the $100,000 donation, this conference would not have taken place, because many of the delegates would not have been able to pay for the fares or the hotel costs. The information it gave to the attendees was enormous, the push it gave to Y2K action was huge, and the probability that it saved trade dollars and trade jobs is extremely high. And the goodwill that Canada gained from that donation was significant. I am pleased that Canada was able to make that contribution, as were the delegates. But the $100,000 pales in comparison to the $10 million put up by Britain for the whole series of World Bank seminars around the world. And when you look at the risks that we are facing, it makes no sense at all to be so cheap in what we invest in this aspect of combating the Millennium Bug. Whether you consider it from the point of view of expanding trade, saving jobs or just gaining international brownie points, putting some dollars on the line makes lots of sense. What does it take for our leaders to wake up? How do we get a message through? Is there anyone out there with the ability to do some pretty simple math, and then follow up with the guts to take a simple decision? --- y2ktimebomb.com