I came in midway through. Frank assessment of trouble in nuke plants and oil & gas. will be rebroadcast tonite at 7 pm est i think. anyone else see it

-- argh (argh@argh.net), March 05, 1999

Answers

I tried, but kept losing audio due to net congestion and then sat waiting for rebuffering to take place. Just went on like that pretty much for the whole 2 hours for me.

I did catch snippets here and there. What I did manage to hear didn't sound good not only for foreign countries, but for the US as well. There seemed to be some concern that the US is developing a false sense of security in the fact that because they started working on the problem sooner they are going to be okay. It was mentioned that the US is more heavily dependent upon technology than most other countries and has a far bigger fix on its hands.

I also gathered that the Gartner Group has assessed that any large company needs at least 3 years to deal with this problem. What came to my mind at that point was the fact that the Russian Military are only beginning to address the problem. Surely they just do not have enough time to fix those missile systems that appears to be a very sensitive topic of discussion.

-- Frustrated (listener@C-SPAN.com), March 05, 1999.

It was like watching Casablanca,"Round up the usual suspects". The Gardner Group guy made the usual disparate comments about those who choose to obtain items for their personal needs. And the graph of failures ramping for the rest of the year was impressive.They still danced around the issue of our supplier countrys being dead in the water. The US was rated a 1 and Saudia Arabia and Venezuela rated a 4. Our failure range was a 2(Except Govt 6) and theirs were 6's and up.

I did however enjoy the AIR TIME IT GOT. I think the media is ever so slowly starting to put the spotlight on it. This may get more people on board and in the prep mode. One can only hope.

-- nine (nine_fingers@hotmail.com), March 05, 1999.

Ms. State dept & Mr. CIA gave a blunt statement as to the reality of the problems, and stated they WILL occur. They would not yet make a public estimate of the body count.

-- curtis schalek (schale1@ibm.net), March 05, 1999.

I saw about half of it, and agree with nine about that graph of failures. I missed the explanation of why the failures are expected to take off like a rocket (according to the chart) beginning this July and reaching an apex around October. (This was not about the embedded systems, which if left unremediated will crash around the rollover date).

Anyone catch the explanation for the July - October failure ramp up this year?

-- Rob Michaels (sonofdust@net.com), March 05, 1999.

Rob: Fiscal years and look-aheads.

-- curtis schalek (schale1@ibm.net), March 05, 1999.

Cap Gemini said government should warn people as they have in Britian. Bennent did NOT say "I just did that Tuesday!".

-- curtis schalek (schale1@ibm.net), March 05, 1999.

Thanks Curtis. Interesting. Makes me wonder why not April then, since Japan (2nd largest economy and nowhere near Y2K ready, as well as Canada - one of our largest trading partners - are going to a fiscal 2000 in April, not in July. State of New York too. Maybe it has more to do with a six month look ahead and event horizons.

-- Rob Michaels (sonofdust@net.com), March 05, 1999.

Rob: Occurances, not impact. Businesses outnumber governments. Anyway trend is up from here. After the rollover, it is slow to come down. This means LOTS of continuing problems for 1+ yrs.

-- curtis schalek (schale1@ibm.net), March 05, 1999.

I, too, caught parts. Lots of charts from Cap Gemini and GartnerGroup. Very serious tone overall. Noone said it, but the notion of countries starting Y2K assessment now leaves enough time to actually fix about 15 lines of code. What was said was that any work done will help to minimize problems. Agreed, but noone had the cajones to say it's too late.

Some mention of the Euro conversion, and how anecdotal evidence suggests it didn't go as smoothly as reported, and how Europe has a "false sense of security" because of the Euro project. Y2K can not be compared to the Euro, which was a niche project with limited scope.

Sen. Bennett asked about the Cap Gemini survey of US and European companies which showed the U.S., which is further along in remediation, is less confident in its mission critical systems working. Several reasons given for this. "Ball of yarn" analogy: looks managable on the outside, but as it unravels it gets messy.

What I saw was not new to me. However, some of the testimony was powerful, especially when one "reads between the lines".

When transcripts become available, I trust someone will post the link.

-- Steve Hartsman (hartsman@ticon.net), March 05, 1999.

Does anyone know what sort of warning the British government has issued to it's citizens?

-- Interested (in&@Britswarning.com), March 05, 1999.

Rob;

The reason for the expected large spike in the July to October range is primarily the sheer number of business and state entities, I think that it is some 36 states, plus who knows how many counties, cities, etc, who will be involved with roll overs in their fiscal years on July 1. A large number of the smaller business owners use that date too.

This large spike is because the Federal Government used to have a 1 July fiscal start and everybody else sort of played "me too" for ease of bookkeeping, taxes etc.

That volume of rollovers is why I stated a few weeks, (a month?), ago that I thought that they could keep the lid on this sucker until around June.

I have no idea of the total number of entities that will be involved on 1 July, but the sheer volume of that number, and the resultant number of people, those actually involved in those areas, who will be aware of any problems is why I expect to hear a great wailing and gnashing of teeth around then.

My thoughts anyway.

Mayhaps I am wrong.

S.O.B.

-- sweetolebob (buffgun@hotmail.com), March 05, 1999.

Interesting that Bennett raised the Panic issue & said he talked about it weekly with Koskinen. Consensus seemed to be that the worst-case countries will suffer the least panic because their are already use to severe infrastructure problems. Also that U.S. public should be given more information. The subtext that I heard was that Bennett would like to be more forthcoming a la the 8-page brochure that Britain has distributed to 20 million citizens, but that he is being held back by the powers that be. Does anybody have any idea of the contents of the British pamphlet/ or a site link?

Cia & State's assesment of maritime shipping & trade especially as it impacts oil and thus the U.S.--from well-head pumping to refining to port compliance to ship navigation vulnerabilities--indicated that this, plus the nuke plant hazards in Russia, plus West European reliance on Russia's Gazprom (15%) are their biggest concerns.

-- argh (argh@argh.com), March 05, 1999.

Rob: Japan rolls to FY 1999. FY 1998 ends March 31, 1999. I just posted a translation of Japan energy sector schedule and progress. Petroleum industry is giving me heartburn. As I'm sure you know, we import 100% of all energy here in Japan. In addition, every electronic product (consumer, industrial, medical, telecommunication etc) made by all brands includes parts made by Japanese companies. Everything with a printed circuit board has Japanese parts. Everything.

-- PNG (png@gol.com), March 05, 1999.

I watched it with a "newbie" that is 78 years old. She got it in a flash. Took her about two seconds to connect (disconnect?) the oil supplies with tankers, with US ports. She got it all. So I think if DGI s or those never exposed to it, saw this they will really sit up and take notice. I thought it the best program I had seen and I got the impression that the State Dept and the CIA told Bennett a little more than he really wanted to hear. Two different occassions it was mentioned that the public needs to be informed. The Gartner rep is an ass! But the rest of them held their own and told it the way it is. One very definite impression I got was that they all feel that eastern Europe is toast. (Ice?) I think there will be thousands that freeze and starve. Gotta go....on my way to WollyWorld.

Got oatmeal?

-- Taz (tassie@aol.com), March 05, 1999.

I too caught it on c-span. Makes you Run to Walmart....What I deemed to be of most importance was the look on these faces when the meeting ended. Bennett looked like he was literally carrying the weight of the entire world on his shoulders. There were many looks of 'grave' concern. Bennett smiled once. That was scarey to me. Another issue not mentioned here was that Russia is already begging for 17 million to get going on their Nuke plants. Bennett responded that there will be many more asking for help. Helllooo....we cant help everybody. And food for thought, since we cant help all, what of the ones we cant? Jealousy. Anger.. I feel they dont wish to deal with or rather dont really know how to eliminate 'panic'...hello again, it is much to late now to try and figure it out. Do most feel the same way I do? Since never really giving public much info, now it will have greater panic potential? Your thoughts?

-- consumer (private@aol.com), March 05, 1999.

S.O.B: So we are talking volume here. If you are right, then there will be one heck of a spike up in awareness, along with what that means too. BTW, the Feds changed to 1 October didn't they - but I get your point that it used to be July and so many went along but never changed.

PNG: Yes, we have discussed Japan's imports before, back in November I think, so I have some familiarity with the dependencies. I knew that their parts were in most electronic products, but not Everything - scary. Was your post regarding the energy sector here on the forum or on your site? Also, somewhat off topic, but do you see any signs of the Japanese government (and housewives) bailing out of U.S. Treasuries?

-- Rob Michaels (sonofdust@net.com), March 05, 1999.

Rob: I don't see any reason the gov't would sell now...the plan is to sell massive amounts of Japan Gov't Bonds to American housewives.

-- PNG (png@gol.com), March 05, 1999.

PNG: I'm surprised at that. I thought the Japanese would be selling U.S. Treasuries to raise cash and increase the yen money supply in order to help stem what you and Robert have refered to as "decession" - in other words a way to try and reinflate and at the same time possibly save some face.

Perhaps one reason is that the U.S. long bond is still about 400 basis points higher than the Japanese long bond which is paying less than 2%, and therefore attractive to Japanese - or could it have to do with the currency exchange rates? No way do I understand the attractiveness of Japanese bonds to Amercians - what am I missing?

-- Rob Michaels (sonofdust@net.com), March 05, 1999.