On Dan Rather's evening news I just watched Steve Kroft (of "60 Minutes") interviewing leaders in industry and Y2K study, including Ed Yardeni on Y2K. I must say that this was a good coverage of the basic issues in just a 4-minute-or-so segment. Steve Kroft kept pushing them to admit, "Then no one really knows what will happen, do they?" which seemed to me very good, because they had to respond that no one does, but that serious disruptions are expected around the world. This is the most decent media coverage I've seen to date. Cheers to CBS and Steve Kroft, and I hope they read such comments and this encourages more disclosure from all the media.

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), November 08, 1999

Answers

http://www.cbs.com/flat/section_100.html Is the workd ready for y2k. Steve Kroft. link please

-- && (&&@&&.&), November 08, 1999.

Elaine,

My understanding, this was only the first part of a y2k series. I'm not sure if the following sessions are tomorrow or not.

Anyone know the schedule?

-- Tommy Rogers (Been there@Just a Thought.com), November 08, 1999.

Here's an article that matches almost word for word the Y2K segment that was on tonight's CBS Evening News:

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

http://www.cbs.com/flat/story_200787.html

Is The World Ready For Y2K?

* Billions Have Been Spent

* Time Is Running Out

* And No One Really Knows What Will Happen

Monday, November 08,1999 - 07:05 PM ET

(CBS) The CBS Evening News is looking ahead to the 21st century. Some predict the next century will begin with a bang from the Y2K bug, causing a cascade of computer crashes and chaos. White house officials Monday unveiled a $40 million Y2K problem operations center, just in case.

So is there a ticking Y2K time bomb? 60 Minutes Correspondent Steve Kroft is on the case, on the countdown to 2000.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------

If you ask the question, where will the Y2K computer bug do serious damage? The answer is: No one really knows. But everyone agrees on one thing: All is not Y2K-ready in the world.

"There's the unknown, and there are regions that are simply well behind and apparently not giving it enough attention," says John Pasqua, AT&T's vice president for Y2K.

Pasqua believes the $650 million spent by the telecommunications giant means the phones will work at home. He's not so sure about some of the rest of the world.

"There's still some reluctance on the part of some of these international countries to share their status information with the rest of the world, and that's why we're putting them in the high-risk category," says Pasqua.

Places people are worried about are:

* Oil-producing Indonesia, where phones failing or the electricity going out would mean energy shortages.

* Russia, where Y2K problems at airports could mean a slowdown in air traffic in Europe for weeks.

* Asia, where problems in manufacturing electronic parts and automotive components could ripple through the U.S. economy.

"There's so many links in our global supply chains that all it takes is a few weak links to cause problems," says Ed Yardeni, chief economist at Deutsche Bank.

For several years now, Yardeni has been predicting that Y2K failures equal a 70 percent chance of a worldwide recession.

"As an economist I am not predicting doomsday. I am not predicting anything that we need to particularly panic about. What I am predicting is a recession," he says.

"I just think it's naively optimistic to believe that all these systems are going to function just fine, and there's going to be no problems," he adds.

The assumption is that wealthy countries like the United States or Great Britain are ready.

But that's only an assumption. No one really knows what countries have fixed which problems. The little information available is all self-reported, which means it's almost always reassuring and positive. And no one is checking its reliability.

"We have found from our work that there will be failures at every economic level, in every region of the world," says Jacquelyn Williams-Bridgers, inspector general at the U.S. State Department.

Williams-Bridgers says more than 80 countries are at moderate to high risk of having Y2K problems in telecommunications, power generation and transportation.

"Now there may not be disastrous events but there will be pockets of failures," she adds.

At the World Bank-funded International Y2K Cooperation Center in Washington, director Bruce McConnell worries about networks of computers that may fail gradually, not all at once.

"My assessment is that not very much will happen on the first of January or the second of January. It will be somewhat of a nonevent, and that after that we will start to see failures in business systems, which will come about over days and weeks," says McConnell.

After being asked, "You don't really know how this is going to turn out," McConnell answers "Absolutely not."

And back at AT&T, they know Y2K won't be a one-night stand. SWAT teams will be on call from Dec. 31 on into the first weeks of January.

"With Y2K, it's one of those unique opportunities where you're not done until you run out of time," Pasqua says.

With billions already spent on the computer bug, U.S. companies admit this New Year's Eve, they'll be waiting to see what in the world will go wrong and where. )1999, CBS Worldwide Inc., All Rights Reserved.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), November 08, 1999.

Here is a link to the story:

http://www.cbs.com/flat/story_200787.html

53 days.

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.~net), November 08, 1999.

Anyone else have a hunch that Steve Kroft might be a GI?

-- Wilferd (WilferdW@aol.com), November 08, 1999.

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (equiv. US State Department) has assessed the Y2K readiness of 87 countries here:

http://www.fco.gov.uk/travel/dynpage.asp?Page=144

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), November 08, 1999.

I saw it, too, but somehow it didn't come off as very alarming. Yes, it was more disclosure than we've had, but if I knew nothing, it would not have made me worry. All I hear then is "I'm not talking about the end of the world..." Oh, that doesn't sound so bad then.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), November 08, 1999.

Well. At least it's more than the other networks are doing... yet.

I'll give 'em a "B."

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 08, 1999.

As I recall, Steve Kroft was the reporter for the 60 minutes piece. I suspect he became a GI when putting that report together. This time, he seems to want to get it across that we really don't know what's going to happen -- but it won't be business as usual.

Then, of course, Rather comes on with a slight smirk to close the show.

-- Dean -- from (almost) Duh Moines (dtmiller@midiowa.net), November 09, 1999.

They all looked uncomfortable, nervous, trying not to smirk, smirking nontheless. And all those gee-whiz "war rooms" look extremely computerized -- ironic. 53 days.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), November 09, 1999.

I liked the globe, incarnadined to show the nations that were vulnerable. I said to my wife "ze earth, eet ees all red, no?" and she removed, carefully, another layer of doubt from her mind. Ashton, or is it Leska, who did you think was smirking? Maybe Bruce McConnell, but he may be a congenital smirker. I thought it was rather grave, given the venue (Westinghouse owned propaganda outlet). I never forget A.J. Liebling's maxim, that "the press is free to he who owns one." If corporate tocsins are sounding a bell, even softly, it warrants scrutiny. The State Dept. harridan said that they expect failures to occur in every level of the economy (am I misquoting her?), and both McConnell and Yardeni described lasting, pronounced effects. What was Yardeni's last tag? "It is overly optimistic (or did he say 'silly?') to expect all these system to work perfectly."

-- Spidey (in@jam.bluetube), November 09, 1999.