-Caveat Lector- Some Y2K Items: Attitudes about Y2K can be divided into four quadrants. Imagine "Naive" and "Informed" on the vertical axis, and "Pessimist" and "Optimist" on the horizontal column, looking something like the quadrants from the, "Seven habits of highly effective people" book. So you have a square divided into four smaller squares. In the upper left, you have "Pessimistic informed," in the upper right, "Optimistic informed." On the lower left, "Pessimistic naïve," and in the lower right, "Pessimistic informed." Here are the characteristics of each group: OPTIMISTIC NAIVE This is perhaps the largest group of all. These are people who think Y2K is "no big deal" because they haven't really examined the issue. We're not trying to be insulting, but "ignorance" is a good description here. Optimistic Naive refers to anyone who isn't taking the problem seriously and simultaneously doesn't have good information about it. PESSIMISTIC NAIVE This is a much smaller group, and these are the folks that should appropriately be called "doom and gloomers." These are the people who think the world is coming to an end but don't have any evidence to support that. This is the only group that can appropriately be called, "Alarmists." To be an alarmist is to encourage fear that has no basis in reality. Unfortunately, many people have the definition all wrong: they think that *anybody* with bad news, even if the news is true, is an alarmist. If that were true, every news organization in the country should be called "alarmist" because they report bad news all the time. PESSIMISTIC INFORMED This is a growing group: people who *know* about Y2K and think it's going to be troublesome based on the evidence. Consider the possibilities: It is conceivable that the banking system could collapse, the economy could be severely harmed and thousands of people could die due to Y2K-related failures. These are "radical" ideas to most people, but they are not out of the realm of possibility. (Although this worst-case scenario is hopefully not the most likely one.) But you don't have to believe in the worst-case scenario to be "pessimistic." You might be short-term pessimistic and long-term optimistic. In fact, this is the position of the best-informed Y2K people. They recognize Y2K can be very disruptive in the short term, but that people who prepared will emerge in a position where they can move on and prosper. OPTIMISTIC INFORMED This group knows all about Y2K but still thinks it's "no big deal." This is a very tiny group. In fact, almost all rational people, after looking at the evidence, agree the short-term outlook due to Y2K is somewhat pessimistic. To be informed about Y2K and still think nothing bad will happen is extremely rare. However, there are plenty of people who are half-way between "optimistic informed" and "optimistic naive" because they are *partially* informed. They may have a LITTLE BIT of information about Y2K, but not enough to be really well-educated on the issue. Certainly, these are crude categories for describing a complex thought process, but it's often educational to ask yourself, "What group am I in?" HOW BANKS WILL RATION YOUR CASH In last Friday's alert, we predicted that cash would be rationed at some point in 1999 or 2000. Most people think this isn't possible, largely because they think banks have no way to actually enact cash rationing. But they do! ATMs currently have daily cash limits. In order to ration cash, the process is actually *very* simple: 1) Lower the daily ATM limit to $100 (or whatever daily cash limit they want) 2) Require *all* cash withdrawals to go through the ATMs This solves several problems (from the bank's point of view, anyway). First, it avoids the long lines in the bank lobby -- you know, the kind of lines that cause people to panic. Instead, the lines will form outside the ATM machines. Second, it requires NO NEW PROGRAMMING to accomplish. All it takes is a lowering of the daily cash limit, which is probably an easy-to-configure parameter for the banks. This could easily be accomplished in a matter of days. Perhaps in 24 hours. The workaround, of course, would be to move your money to multiple bank accounts, then you can meet your daily cash limit at each bank. This automatically leads to one important bit of advice for Y2K financial survival: diversify. Having your money in two banks is safer than having it all in one. And if cash withdrawal restrictions go into place as described above, you'll have access to twice the cash. Guess who already thought of that? Russian citizens, of course. They've been playing the bank games for years. With cash limits already in place, and the failure of banks a common event, smart Russian citizens regularly split their (meager) deposits among multiple banks. UNITED NATIONS TACKLES Y2K Why would the United Nations care about Y2K? According to this USA Today story, "The consequences of unpreparedness in any one country can rapidly spill over to other parts of the world,'' says Pakistani Ambassador Ahmad Kamal, the conference organizer. "If the computers of one nation's banking system fail, for example, they could cut off transactions with global partners and rupture the worldwide electronic flow of cash." That's a wake-up call. This is first time -- to our knowledge -- that any government organization has publicly admitted bank failures can cascade across international borders. Y2KNEWSWIRE has been claiming this for quite some time, but this is the first time we've seen it quoted by a major newspaper. If true, this means the U.S. banking system is in far worse shape than you might have thought. Why? Because banks in Asia are *far* behind schedule. Many are certain to fail. If their failures can spill over to U.S. banks, we're in for a ride. Another thing, too: because of the likelihood of bank failures in other countries, bank runs are likely to begin *outside* the United States. Once that happens, it will only take one CNN report to encourage Americans to take their cash out, too, hoping to pre-empt an American bank run. Remember, people like Koskinen keep telling us America is ahead of everybody else. But today we're learning that doesn't matter. Unless the entire world is largely compliant, the United States is still going to experience major problems. Stories at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwswed08.htm http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,29756,00.html?st.ne.87.head OMB ADMITS SOME AGENCIES WON'T MAKE IT A few days ago, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), released another quarterly report reviewing the Year 2000 status of federal agencies. For the first time, the report concluded that some agencies would not make the March, 1999 deadline. On the good side -- if you believe the self-reported status of federal agencies -- 61% of the government's critical systems are now repaired. But as we've learned time and time again, self-reported compliance statistics from federal agencies are all but worthless. Remember the FAA's announcement of being 99% compliant back on September 30? They're still not finished. We're guessing that last 1% is a real pain. Even more important to realize is that an announcement of being "done!" doesn't mean they really are. It means they're claiming to have completed one work-through on the systems. As Y2KNEWSWIRE has reported several times, even private companies using the best programmers end up with systems that still need significant remediation efforts -- even though the programmers *thought* they were finished. And then there's testing and implementation. That requires a year for any large-scale software project, meaning that even if federal agencies make the March, 1999 deadline, they're already three months behind schedule on the testing and implementation. WHAT KIND OF CONTINGENCY PLANS EXACTLY? Even beyond this, the idea that agencies should now make contingency plans because they already know they won't make the deadline is seriously suspect. It implies that contingency plans will somehow replace the need for computers. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Having a plan to hand-write 80 million Medicare checks a month doesn't mean you can pull it off. It just means you have a worthless "contingency plan." When the Medicare computers go down, the value of this plan will become obvious. Remember that only a handful of people on the planet actually have experience in developing and implementing contingency plans during computer failures, and those people are primarily working at the high-paying private sector jobs. Most folks in the government don't have the experience they need to truly understand how to operate their offices without computers. This becomes obvious when you hear suggestions of hand-writing the checks normally printed by computer. Even if you had the army of check-writing people ready to roll, how would you access the database that tells you how much to write and who to mail it to? Even if you could somehow access the data, and assuming each person can hand-write 1000 checks a day, you'd need an army of 4000 people hand-writing checks full-time just to cover Medicare. Multiply this by every state and federal agency that needs to write checks and you end up with three groups in society: 1/3 of the people writing the checks, 1/3 receiving the checks, and 1/3 funding the checks through sky-high taxes. A Socialists dream come true! Yet this is precisely the "contingency plan" now being dreamed up by more federal agencies than you'd care to know about. Or there's another contingency plan angle that sounds just as bad: we'll simply re-print the checks from December of 1999! Nobody is suggesting the *real* contingency plan that needs to be considered: the permanent shutting down of several government services. Start with the IRS and work your way down the list. We don't need an IRS to fund the government, we can get along much better with a simpler tax system (like the flat tax or the national sales tax). We wonder what contingency plans the IRS will put in place. If their computers don't work, will they just randomly generate tax bills and mail them out? Most of us probably couldn't tell the difference, frankly. We haven't heard much from the IRS on the Y2K issue, except for a bizarre announcement a few weeks back claiming they had finished all their repairs and were beginning testing. (Huh?) Since then, silence. Ex-IRS programmers generally agree the IRS computers have a near-zero chance of being compliant on time. With barely a year remaining, Congress had better start considering an alternate way to fund the federal government. ABC News story: http://www.abcnews.com/sections/tech/CNET/cnet_fedy2k981209.html If you want to be added to the subscription list (free!), visit http://www.y2knewswire.com and enter your e-mail address in the sign up box located at the upper-left corner of the page. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
