The Euro and other tidbits

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I haven't seen this posted anywhere on here so apologies if it already has.

There is an article on the y2ktoday site that might be of interest to a lot of people

Link : http://www.y2ktoday.com/modules/home/default.asp?feature=true&id=1418

One interesting bit from it is as follows:

Q. You mentioned the Euro. There were a lot of concerns that there would be a lot of "red flag"-type problems with the introduction of the Euro...

A. Yes, and there are. They are now starting to show up. Some of them are big problems. Currency conversion errors to billions of dollars, funds transfers to the wrong bank... It is false to say that the Euro got introduced without any grief or problems; there were a lot of problems. Some of them were offset, though, because the books had to close after the first quarter, before the errors showed up.

So for those people who were querying about why nothing *seemed* to happen badly in regards to the Euro conversion, well there ya go.

Regards, Simon Richards

-- Simon Richards (simon@wair.com.au), May 14, 1999

Answers

The more problems that there were with the Euro - the stronger the argument for the optimist position. OK, there were some major system problems. But did any banks fail? Did the bourses crash? Widespread panic or riots? Most importantly, was there even the slightest noticeable impact upon the daily lives of anyone in the U.S.? After all, it's SYSTEMIC, everything is INTERCONNECTED, and any failure in a bank anywhere will lead to a horrible DOMINO EFFECT of other failures. And shouldn't these Euro problems have caused CORRUPT DATA to infect other firms? How did we survive this??

And yes, Y2K has many more dimensions than the Euro, yadda, yadda, yadda. But extrapolate the zero practical impact of the Euro problems out to a Y2K scenario in the financial arena, and you still don't end up with much. Better stick with hoping the power goes down.

-- Polly (skippy@innermongolia.com), May 14, 1999.


Dear Polly,

The article I quoted and linked to was written on the 10th of May, 1999. This is 4 Months and 10 days after the Euro conversion took place. So I will repost the answer here to the question I quoted, the important bit is in bold.

A. Yes, and there are. They are now starting to show up. Some of them are big problems. Currency conversion errors to billions of dollars, funds transfers to the wrong bank... It is false to say that the Euro got introduced without any grief or problems; there were a lot of problems. Some of them were offset, though, because the books had to close after the first quarter, before the errors showed up.

"They are now starting to show up."

Four months and 10 days after the conversion ....

Regards, Simon Richards

-- Simon Richards (simon@wair.com.au), May 14, 1999.


OK, the bad data is still incubating right now. We still have time to save ourselves.

-- Polly (skippy@innermongolia.com), May 14, 1999.

actually polly is ignoring the major issue here, which is that the Euro conversion was a tiny tiny example of issues surrounded y2k conversion - which means if the failures are already in the billions from that small a subset, the y2k related conversions can end up being orders of magnitude larger.

funny how pollys ignore orders of magnitude like that...

Arlin

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), May 14, 1999.


Y2K may be much more pervasive, but in terms of its potential impact to the global financial system the Euro was definitely far more than a blip. Furthermore, the complexity of the required changes, if not the breadth, of the Euro conversion exceeds that of Y2K. And Euro related problems have a much greater chance of creating 'valid but corrupt' data of the sort that the doomers crow about. Unlike Y2K, where throwing '00' into a calculation usually results in a pretty big hairball being coughed up.

-- Polly (skippy@innermongolia.com), May 14, 1999.


Polly, that's funny..."big ol' hairball".....

One thing that worries me, because I've been shot down by it before: "remediated" EDI where somehow a field that should be numeric unsigned gets re-defined in the dictionary/schema as being signed. I've had all kinds of data nailed by that. Have you?

-- Lisa (lisa@work.now), May 14, 1999.


Polly, do you live in Europe? do you know anyone in the US that was heavily invested in European stocks? do you really believe any company would advertise that they were having big problems? do you personally know whether or not many small businesses went bankrupt or had serious losses to productivity?

-- sarah (qubr@aol.com), May 14, 1999.

Is it my mind playing tricks on me?

It's my understanding that the Euro has NOT been fully implemented as of yet. The whole system is not currently even being utilized let alone tested under real life conditions. Heck, I'm not sure but I don't even think all the work has been completed to fully implement the Euro.

This is a conversion that will occur over years and it's only in it's initial stages and problems have already begun to occur. I don't think it'll ever actually be fully implemented.

Mike ==============================================================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), May 14, 1999.


Lisa - Why would a data dictionary parameter get corrupted unless it was a Stupid Human Trick. Set the fields to reject negative numbers and leave the schema alone.

Sarah - My firm is heavily invested in European stocks and we have several offices over there, AND we had to convert our systems for the Euro. Not a blip. Plus I'm a fairly extreme newshound, and haven't heard of too many failures. I would trust this forum to find them and prove me wrong, however.

-- Polly (skippy@innermongolia.com), May 14, 1999.


Polly - not corrupted, re-defined. An example: some dictionaries you can build automatically based on the DB schema. Now, let's say you store Quantity as a signed integer because it can be driven negative or whatever, but your EDI partner needs it as an unsigned integer, for whatever reason. If your EDI output file's structure is contained in the data dictionary, and when rebuilding the schema (after, say, expanding date fields), if you forget to go unsign the field for that particular output file, you definitely can hose your vendor's data. Really, it's happened to me, and it takes a while to get it fixed on both ends. Just a thought. Sorry.

-- Lisa (lisa@work.now), May 14, 1999.


Polly: addendum. Are you leaving stupid human tricks out of the equation when quantifying Y2K mishaps? Being purist about it?

-- Lisa (lisa@work.now), May 14, 1999.

Lisa - I don't doubt that scenario. I just thought you were implying that corrupt data could modify the data dictionary, which would be like the inmates setting the rules for the prison. I'm not a programmer, but I'm pretty sure things aren't that bolluxed in any system. Just check your signs on 12/31!

-- Polly (skippy@innermongolia.com), May 14, 1999.

Lisa - I'm making the perhaps foolish assumption that SHT's will at least be at a minimum during the Y2K hot period, due to the unprecedented amount of focus, scrutiny, review, triple-checking and paranoia that will accompany this 'event'.

-- Polly (skippy@innermongolia.com), May 14, 1999.

Only real problems I have heard of involved increased error rates in transactions that had to be done by hand. Just as was expected. Matter of fact, they had a major software changeover about 12 years ago as well, error rates this time were only about 1/3 of the peak rate back then.

And that brings up a point that most on the dark side seem to miss - that standards change and major industries must change everything, software and hardware to match the new standards. Y2K is NOT the only software project to touch every bank in the world - and it will NOT be the last one to do so. It won't even be the last one with a definite and unchangable time limit. The idea that this sort of thing has never been done before is bogus to that extent.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), May 14, 1999.


Polly - I'm making the perhaps foolish assumption that SHT's will at least be at a minimum maximum during the Y2K hot period, due to the unprecedented amount of focus, scrutiny, review, triple-checking and paranoia harriedness, overlookedness, incompetence, and paralysis that will accompany this 'event'.

That's what separates a optimist from a pessimist. Incididentally, I expect a huge pile of problems in Q4 due to live testing.

-- Lisa (lisa@work.now), May 14, 1999.



I should probably proffer that my scenario is more likely in manufacturing/JIT/sales than finance.

-- Lisa (lisa@work.now), May 14, 1999.

Lisa - Thanks for throwing me that bone. I'm only here to defend the honor and virtue of the financial system.

-- Polly (skippy@innermongolia.com), May 14, 1999.

Polly,

I did not say that the potential problems from the Euro conversion would only cause a blip - my point was that y2k's potential impact is orders of magnitude greater - specificly because of the all pervasive nature of the problem. Thus if the errors are in the billions of dollars now with the Euro, we can expect even greater - indeed one or more orders of magnitude greater problems in the financial industry resulting from y2k.

Arlin

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), May 14, 1999.


Not to go off on a tangent, but I think the billions of dollars from the Capers Jones quote meant that transactions with a notional value in that range had data problems associated with them. It does not mean that companies actually lost billions of dollars. Evaluating problems based on the theoretical value of the impacted transactions is meaningless, since a simple glitch could cause a trillion dollar transaction. (Actually saw one of those one morning - yikes!)

-- Polly (skippy@innermongolia.com), May 14, 1999.

http://www.y2ktimebomb.com/International/pobeirne9904.htm

"Lessons From the Euro Changeover"

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), May 14, 1999.


In all this I'm just wondering what the impact would be on Y2K remediation if they start having lots of serious Euro problems. After all if the Euro problems are happening now they would drop their Y2K projects for a little bit, fix the Euro problem and go back to fixing Y2K.

Thanks for those pointing out that the Euro conversion was only phase one, I believe the public in those countries will be switching over to the Euro at the beginning of 2001?

Regards, Simon Richards

-- Simon Richards (simon@wair.com.au), May 14, 1999.


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