Clearly lays out risks of derivatives, risks to central banks of flight to gold, need for CBs to have gold reserves. Very interesting and frightening. Thanks to Gary North for finding it.

"The first banker summed up his position by stating that, 'Y2K is a small risk relative to the day to day running of the bank.'

The second banker replied, 'That's ironic, I've heard that Herstatt risk could be the real turd, in the Y2K punchbowl.'"

http://www.senate.gov/~y2k/hearings/991013/instit_banking.pdf

-- ng (cantprovideemail@none.com), October 14, 1999

Answers

h ttp://www.senate.gov/~y2k/hearings/991013/instit_banking.pdf
From the COST OF FAILURE section:

"The potential for any of the 5 risks to materialize into a worst-case multi-trillion dollar scenario due to Y2K is hopefully low; our crudest speculation would be below 30%."

Last sentence from the report (CONCLUSION):

"In the face of partial demonetisation of economies, maybe these goldbugs arent so off base."

-- Jim (x@x.x), October 14, 1999.

Many reports out this week, show-stoppers, proof, handwriting on the wall.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), October 14, 1999.

But, A&L, don't you know... hand-waving takes care of handwriting on the wall.... ;-)

-- Lane Core Jr. (elcore@sgi.net), October 14, 1999.

"The second banker replied, 'That's ironic, I've heard that Herstatt risk could be the real turd, in the Y2K punchbowl.'"

I guess this one went over my head but I'm trying to GI. Would someone tell me what "Herstatt" is/means.

sdb

-- S. David Bays (SDBAYS@prodigy.net), October 14, 1999.

DAvew, for the def'n go here:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001VM0

It covers ALL of the definition.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), October 15, 1999.

Chuck:

Thanks for the tip. I'm glad you didn't try to explain it and I know that,if asked, I couldn't.

sdb

-- S. David Bays (SDBAYS@prodigy.net), October 15, 1999.