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Technology Stocks : Y2K (Year 2000): Is Wall Street & Banking Vulnerable? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: C.K. Houston who wrote (11)	5/27/1999 9:55:00 AM
From: Ken Salaets	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 158

Hey, where's scrumpy? ggg. eom. Ken

To: C.K. Houston who wrote (11)	5/28/1999 12:59:00 AM
From: TD	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 158

Whatever you do, do not get YOUR own cash out of the bank, How dare you! Testimony of Edward Yourdon Before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem United States Senate "Community Y2K Preparedness: Is There News They Can Use?" May 25, 1999 . . . . My name is Ed Yourdon. I've worked in the computer software industry for 35 years, and I'm currently the Director of Y2K Advisory Services for a research organization known as the Cutter Consortium. I've written 25 books on computer technology, including two recent books that focus on the Y2K problem: Time Bomb 2000, which I co-authored with my daughter Jennifer; and The Complete Y2K Home Preparation Guide, co-authored with Robert Roskind. . . . As another example of unfortunate rhetoric, consider the remarks made by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on May 6th of this year, at a Chicago Fed conference, after delivering a speech about the economy: "I'm increasingly less concerned about whether there will be true systemic problems. What I am concerned about are peoples' reactions to the fear that something momentous is going to happen on January 1st 2000.'' He went on to say, "I'm sure that people will get very wise soon and recognize that the last thing you want to do is to draw inordinate amounts of currency out of the banks." It's comforting to know that Mr. Greenspan is "increasingly less concerned" than he presumably was at some point in the past, though it would be nice to know what he means by "true systemic problems" and why he's less concerned. But if I'm a typical middle-class citizen, I'm probably less concerned about such cosmic issues as "systemic problems" than I am about the question of whether I should take some of my money out of the bank. And it's the last sentence of the excerpt quoted above that addresses that question. Most of us understand that Mr. Greenspan is advising us not to do anything extreme or rash. But how are we supposed to translate that into specific action? In particular, how are we supposed to interpret the word "inordinate" in the context of Mr. Greenspan's sentence? Is $100 inordinate? A thousand dollars? A week's income? A month's income? Does "inordinate" mean the same thing for all of us, or does it mean something different for married people with children than it does for single people? Take a look at Mr. Greenspan's sentence again - "I'm sure that people will get very wise soon and recognize that the last thing you want to do is to draw inordinate amounts of currency out of the banks" - and you'll see that it raises a number of other questions, such as: Does Mr. Greenspan mean that "people" are not very wise today? All of the people? Some of the people? Am I one of those people? Is he one of those people? How would we know one of those unwise people if we bump into them? Just how "unwise" are we? How long have we been unwise? What made us unwise? Is our unwiseness dangerous to our health? To someone else's health? What credentials are required to declare that someone is wise or unwise? Just how "soon" we all become "very wise"? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month? How will we know when it has happened? By what miraculous means will this occur? How much wiser will we be when we have become very wise? Twice as wise? What is the basis - i.e., "I am sure" - for Mr. Greenspan's confidence that this sudden increase of wisdom will occur soon? Is there some pronouncement we should be waiting for, e.g., where the GAO and the President hold a joint conference in which they provide both scientific proof that there won't be any major breakdowns? Why is drawing "inordinate amounts" (whatever that means) the "last thing you want to do"? What are all the things that would precede this last thing - i.e., is there a subtle implication that there might be other "socially acceptable" forms of Y2K preparation that would okay, just so long as the "last thing" we contemplate is drawing out inordinate amounts of currency? If the drawing out of "currency" is being described as a not-very- wise act of not-very-wise people, is there some other form in which it could be withdrawn that would meet the approval of the very-wise-ones? What about T-bills? What about gold? What about writing a check that empties your bank account, for the purchase of a zillion cases of Spam? With all due respect to Mr. Greenspan, I don't think that speeches like this one contribute to the kind of thoughtful discourse that we need to have if we hope to make an informed decision about what we plan to do with our money that currently resides in the nation's banks. On the contrary, the speech consists of a number of ambiguous, undefined terms strung together in such a way as to provide an emotional appeal against panicking.