PNG, unless I'm mistaken, we haven't heard from you LATELY with respect to Japan Y2K status and, if you're willing, your PERSONAL estimate of Y2K impacts on Japan and rest of Asia as of this point in the game. Also, your expectations of playing out of bank problems there through rest of this year and into next.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), April 18, 1999

Answers

http://infoseek.go.com/Content?arn=a0107LBY964reulb-19990416&qt=% 22year+2000% 22+bug*+glitch*+y2k&sv=IS&lk=noframes&col=NX&kt=A&ak=news1486

[snip]

Japan Firms Worry About Legal Risks Of Y2K Bug

04:17 a.m. Apr 16, 1999 Eastern

By Yvonne Chang

TOKYO (Reuters) - The approach of the new millennium is giving Japanese corporate executives a case of legal jitters as they worry about a potential flood of lawsuits stemming from the year 2000 computer bug.

But unlike the United States, which is working on new legislation to limit such lawsuits, Japan plans no new framework to protect firms from legal liabilities.

That means companies will have to rely on existing laws and specific contracts to resolve disputes triggered by millennium-related computer failures, experts said.

Reflecting growing corporate concern, more than 80 businessmen, mainly from the financial and information technology industries, gathered here last week for a seminar on how to protect themselves from legal headaches stemming from the bug.

[snip]

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), April 18, 1999.

BigDog:

Y2K

There's really little information that has an valuenow. It's either "news" written by people unqualified to discern the signficance of what they're writing or "opinion" by people with their feet stuck in concrete (either way).

I'm going to hold off until the quarterly y2k results survey is released in July.

Banks

Huge write offs of bad debt at the end of FY98 will skew corporate reports for banks. The bad news will be FY losses, but the good news is action. Foreign investment in Japan is verystrong right now in real estate, commercial paper and government bonds. The Nikkei has outperformed the Dow so far this year. That's right... you would have made more money investing in the Tokyo exchange than the New York exchange. Japanese banks are not out of the woods, yet the mood is definitely serious to clean them up.

Once again, I'll wait until the first of June until after FY98 results are out...

-- PNG (png@gol.com), April 18, 1999.