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-- TM (mercier7@pdnt.com), January 04, 2000

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Gary North's Y2K Links and Forums The Year 2000 Problem: The Year the Earth Stands Still

By now, you have heard about the Year 2000 computer problem, also known as Y2K or the Millennium Bug. When I started this Web site in January of 1997, not many people had heard of it. There were no books for a general audience on it. Now, there are hundreds.

Yet even this late in the game, the press is convinced that readers do not understand it. Today, in almost every published article on y2k, the journalist feels compelled to include this: "The problem exists because programmers for three decades used the last two digits of the century as substitutes for all four digits. Thus, 1967 is written 67, and 1999 is written 99. The problem will come in 2000 when unrepaired computer programs will read 00 as 1900."

Actually, unrepaired IBM-clone personal computers will revert to either 1980 or 1984, but the problem still exists, and not just in ancient models (pre-1998). Millions of old PC's are still used in running the infrastructures of most of the world. There may be 300 million PC's still in use, worldwide, and most are not compliant.

Add to this 50 billion embedded chips -- or maybe 70 billion. Perhaps only 1% of these are noncompliant. Or 3%. No one seems to know. (Three percent of 70 billion chips is over two billion chips.) We know only that there is a lot of chip- based systems to test, replace bad chips, and test again. (See Noncompliant Chips.)

But it is not just computer programs that are noncompliant. The data stored in these computers are noncompliant. It is also computer operating systems, including DOS, Windows 95, and early versions of Windows 98.

Over the last three to five years, large organizations around the world have been paying programmers to fix these systems. With only a few weeks to go before the century date change, the vast majority of these firms and governments are still noncompliant. This includes the largest money center banks on earth. The threat is two-fold: bank runs by depositors and, far more important, what Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan calls cascading cross defaults, where banks cannot settle accounts with each other, and the banking system goes into gridlock, worldwide.

Because corporate computer systems are noncompliant, they have not been subjected to rigorous final testing, which can take months. This was always a major problem, as I have said on this site from the beginning. (See Testing.) In 1997 and 1998, Fortune 1000 company after company promised to be finished with all repairs, leaving "a full year for testing." With very few exceptions, organizations missed this crucial deadline. The press, which had quoted it faithfully, promptly dropped the missed deadline down the Orwellian memory hole. The U.S. government, still noncompliant, has had numerous deadlines, beginning with September 30, 1998. It never meets these deadlines. No mainstream reporter ever mentions this fact in print.

Yet few people have changed their minds about y2k since March 1, 1999. In that month, all signs of panic, even among the 1% or less of American y2k-preparationists, disappeared overnight. The U.S. press has cooperated with the U.S. government and large trade groups in assuring the public that there is no big problem, that the December 31 deadline will not be missed by any important segment of the society. (Why will this deadline be any different from all the earlier ones? No one asks.)

In every country, the public has been assured that there is no need to panic, that everything will be all right. Especially banks. Over and over, the public is assured that banks will be all right, that there is no reason to get more than a few days' worth of currency.

If everything is all right, why have the vast majority of organizations missed the numerous deadlines that they have publicly announced?

The U.S. government assures the nation that y2k will seriously affect only foreign nations (rarely named, and when named, issue immediate official denials) and small businesses. But in the U.S., small businesses -- under 500 employees -- number 24 million. One-third of them are thought by the U.S. government's Small Business Administration to have done nothing to repair y2k. These businesses employ tens of millions of people. They also supply the largest businesses that are "not quite compliant."

Oil-exporting nations are not compliant. The U.S. imports half of its oil.

The largest companies that convert oil into finished products were not compliant as of early 1999. The industry promised it would be compliant by September 30. So far, no such announcement has been made. There is a new deadline for the industry: December 31.

U.S. ports are noncompliant. But 95% of all imported goods come through these ports.

We are told that the electrical power generating industry is almost compliant, but the basis of these assurances is a series of unverified, self-reported data from anonymous firms. These reports have been assembled by a private agency financed by the U.S. power industry, NERC.

What happens to electrical power generation if fuel and spare parts cease to be produced? The typical urban power company relies on more than 5,000 suppliers. The reports issued by NERC never discuss this aspect of the y2k problem.

As for the chemical industry, the news is not reassuring. The U.S. government's Chemical Safety Board sent a warning about noncompliant chemical plants to all 50 state governors on July 22, 1999. Yet this industry is the major exporter of goods industry in the U.S.

The U.S. Navy published on the Web, and then pulled (no explanation offered), a report on the risks to 144 U.S. cities due to failures of public utilities. The U.S. government and then the Navy went into damage control mode when the findings of this report were posted on a Web site that, within days, received so many hits that it had to be shut down and redesigned. Updates to the Navy's June, 1999 "Master Utilities" report have reduced many risk assessments, but the risks are still serious.

There is little but bad news coming from the nation's water and sewer utilities. Think of your community without water or sewer services for, say, a month.

The universal refrain is: "We can run it manually." For a few hours, maybe. But where is there publicly available evidence that large public utilities have produced detailed operations manuals and have implemented extensive training programs to be sure that employees can run all systems manually for days or weeks or months? There is no such evidence. The slogan is a public relations ploy.

I am not a computer programmer. My Ph.D. is in history. For over three decades I have studied the operations of bureaucracies. I have served as a Congressman's research assistant. I have seen how the U.S. government operates. All things are going according to standard operating procedure: public relations handouts, unverified positive statements, and verbal assurances that everything is fine here. Serious y2k problems are limited to the Other Guys Over There.

But the computers of the Other Guys Over There exchange data with "our" computers. Bad data from their computers can reinfect our computers and their data. This, the PR people never discuss in public. Even if our computers somehow can be programmed to lock out noncompliant data, then the computerized systems that rely on shared data will break down. Think "banking system." (See Imported Data.)

Things will not break down all at once in early January unless the power grid goes down and stays down. But the domino effect will create ever-increasing institutional noise and confusion throughout January and beyond. Your check will not be in the mail. (See Domino Effect.)

(To view my original home page, which I removed on October 20, 1999, click here.)

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-- xyz (xyz@zyx.com), January 04, 2000.

Gary North's Y2K Links and Forums Main Categories Page

Let's get to the bottom line right here: my May 7, 1999 letter to Alan Greenspan.

There are over 6,000 documents on this site. This is growing by over 200 a month. The evidence is rolling in from all sides now, and the vast bulk of it says that the Year 2000 Problem (y2k) is not being dealt with fast enough.

If you want to search this site for details, use this search engine.

I maintain that the y2k problem is systemic. It cannot be fixed. The interconnections are too many. A noncompliant computer will spread bad data and re-corrupt a compliant computer. They cannot all be fixed. There is no agreed-upon standard for even the placement of the century date. Either the noncompliant computers will re-corrupt the compliant ones, or else the compliant ones must cease all contact with noncompliant ones, thereby shutting down entire systems, most notably the banking system. If we can't fix almost all noncompliant computers (and we can't), it does no permanent good to fix any of them. This is the "dirty little secret" of the computer programming guild.

Few people believe this. Few people are even aware of the threat. But one man who is aware is President Clinton.

On February 4, 1998, President Clinton signed an executive order that set up a commission to coordinate the Year 2000 repairs of the United States government. If the Year 2000 Problem were not a very serious problem, why would he do this?

One month after President Clinton signed this order, the man in charge of the British government's Year 2000 Project called for a meeting of the managers and senior technicians of the nation's public utilities, to prepare contingency plans for a possible breakdown in public services. If the Year 2000 Problem were not a serious threat, why would any government official do this?

In the same week that the British official called for this meeting, his counterpart in Australia announced that the Australian government would not meet the January 1, 2000 deadline, nor would the nation's largest businesses. He called for "workarounds" -- another name for contingency plans. If the Year 2000 Problem were not serious, why would this be necessary?

It took me from early 1992 until late 1996 to come to grips emotionally with the Year 2000 Problem. You had better be a lot faster on the uptake than I was. We're running out of time.

I don't mean that society is running out of time to fix this problem. Society has already run out of time for that. There are not enough programmers to fix it. The technical problems cannot be fixed on a system-wide basis. The Millennium Bug will hit in 2000, no matter what those in authority decide to do now. As a system, the world economy is now beyond the point of no return. So, when I say "we," I mean you and I as individuals. We are running out of time as individuals to evade the falling dominoes.

If you want to know what we're facing, how it happened, and why it cannot be fixed, read this article.

If you want a chuckle while you're at it, click here.

What is the central issue of the Year 2000 Problem? The threat to the division of labor, which keeps us alive. No one else is talking about this, yet it is the key issue. Without the modern division of labor, a pencil would be a miracle, let alone a power generation plant. We are facing a breakdown of civilization if the power grid goes down.

I was the only person saying this on a Web site in early 1998, although a few sites do today. In early 1998, all the experts who discussed the Year 2000 Problem (y2k) were in the "increased awareness" business: "We must alert managers to the problem." From 1996 onward, I said that it was way too late for the awareness strategy to work. The managers can't hire enough programmers to fix it. Even if they could, this would not solve the problem of noncompliant embedded chips. Most well-known y2k experts still promote the "we can fix it" illusion.

Initially, you won't initially believe what's on this site. It's too overwhelming. The threat to your way of life is too great. You'll almost certainly go into what is called denial. But I have done my best to make this site an antidote to denial. Emotionally, you won't want to accept my analysis. But I have offered factual support for my scenario -- more evidence than you are going to get from some skeptic who says, "Trust me: it's just not that big a problem." My recommendation: trust no one who offers no evidence.

I have also added a useful educational tool, what I call the doomsday computer. You can now test your own scenarios of what can happen. Try it. See what your own assumptions tell you about the future after 1999. Click here.

For a similar tool that enables you to estimate the risk to the United States' banking system, click here.

Almost everyone who has studied the problem admits that it really is a problem. But saying that it's a problem is too vague. It tends to lull people into a sense of complacency. "A problem" doesn't sound too bad. Whenever anyone dismisses the Year 2000 issue as merely "a problem" -- just one among many -- beware. Ask the critic three questions: (1) Exactly how big a problem is it? (2) How will it impact me and my family? (3) What steps must I take to avoid its worst effects? Anyone who does not have specific answers to these questions is asking you to risk a personal disaster by sitting tight and hoping for the best. He wants you to do as little as he has done and plans to do to avoid a personal diusaster.

It is a very big problem, worldwide in scope and without historical precedent (unless we count the Tower of Babel). At the same time, the y2k story is inherently implausible. How could a seemingly trivial computer programming tradition of the 1950's bring down the West's governments and banks? Yet it will. This possibility is not being discussed seriously today -- at least not in the popular media. (The one major exception was the NEWSWEEK cover story on June 2, 1997.) That a computer glitch could cause a worldwide economic depression that lasts a decade is not being discussed seriously by politicians -- at least not in public.

This problem was recognized over a decade ago. In the first entry in my "Compliance" category, I summarize an ad that was run in 1986 that warned about the Year 2000 Problem. If you think the world is going to meet the Jan. 1, 2000 deadline, read my summary. Then click the link and read the original ad. The response then was virtually zero. Nothing was done then, when there was enough time to fix the problem. We have run out of time. (See the category, Too Late.)

There is another problem: the typical large mainframe computer system has several other arcane languages besides the more familiar COBOL embedded in it -- in some systems, 70 or more (in the case of one Defense Department system). Sadly, hardly anyone still understands them.

The national power grid is the most important system at risk. If it goes down because of programming errors throughout the system, a 10-year depression would be a mild result. Every participant in the grid must be year 2000-compliant if the system is to be compliant. (See Power Grid.)

If the banking system is not compliant, the world's system of payments faces extinction. If people believe that their money is at risk because of a computer failure, there will be massive bank runs, all over the world. The banks will either be shut down by governments or else they will be bankrupted. Then how will you pay for anything? How will you pay your power company, water company, supermarket, or gasoline station? If consumers can't pay, suppliers will go out of business. Yet banks are not compliant. Neither is the banking system. Every participant must be year 2000-compliant if the system is to be compliant. I do not believe that the banking system will be compliant by Jan. 1, 2000.

If you think the banks' problems are not real, you need to get this question answered: Why was no money center bank Year 2000- compliant in the first quarter of 1999? (The usual estimate is that final testing takes 40% to 70% of a repair project's money and time -- after the system is judged compliant.)

Ask two questions of anyone who assures you that fixing y2k is fairly easy, once management decides to do it: (1) Why did it take Social Security's team of 400 programmers from 1991 to December, 1998, to announce that it was finished fixing its system (with a year of testing ahead of it), which contains 30 million lines of code? What about the extra 33 million lines they discovered in the 50 states in 1997? (2) Are Citicorp (400m lines) and Chase Manhattan Bank (200m lines) likely to finish their repairs on time, since they began fixing their systems in late 1995?

If the banks go down, programmers will not get paid. They will walk away, if they can. They will not complete their work on y2k. All talk about "realistic" y2k repair deadlines is unrealistic if the banks are closed by runs in 1999.

Would you leave your savings in the bank for, say, 2% (after taxes) per year if you suspected that a computer failure might wipe out your account in six months? Or would you go down, withdraw cash, and wait to see what happen six months later? Do you think you're the only person this clever?

Then there is the telecommunications industry. What happens if the phones shut down? Banks would go bankrupt within a few weeks. This communications threat has been raised with respect to international telecommunications. The warning was sounded by the head of Britain's Telecoms Managers Association.

Then there are the trains. They are governed by mainframe computers. The computers not only guide actual train movements, they tell management where the cars are. What if the computers go blind? Where is that car full of wheat, coal, or chemicals? How will anyone switch trains and cars from one track to another? If Company A gets its computers 2000-compliant, but company B doesn't, what happens to the national railway system? If Company B is compliant, but its fix does not match company A's fix, what happens to the system? (This problem affects every system, including banks.) If rail freight goes down, what happens to food supplies?

What happens to Japan's commuter trains into Tokyo? What happens when Japanese housewives draw cash out of the already shaky Japanese banks? Those banks hold billions of dollars of U.S. Treasury debt. What if they start selling off this debt? What happens to the dollar? To U.S. interest rates? To the world's stock markets?

If they somehow fix every line of code in the United States, that constitutes about 22% of the world's code. What happens to compliant computers when they exchange data with noncompliant ones? Either they shut down or they absorb the noncompliant data, thereby destroying the original repair. (See Imported Data.) In either case, the system fails.

Then there are the noncompliant embedded chips and systems. No one knows how many of the approximately 25 billion embedded chips are noncompliant. Estimates run as high as 6%. Each noncompliant chip must be found and replaced by hand, including the ones in deep sea applications and high altitude satellites. Also, any chips that are over three years old probably cannot be replaced; they are no longer in production.

Systems. We are totally dependent on systems. These systems are in turn dependent on noncompliant software and hardware. If one component of a system fails, it threatens the entire system. If one system fails, it threatens other systems. The Year 2000 Problem is a systemic problem. This is why it cannot be fixed -- too many interdependent parts. (See Domino Effect.)

For a list of these vulnerable systems, with a discussion of why they are at risk, visit the Cassandra Project.

If a large organization actually completed its software repair by the end of 1998, which many U.S. firms promised and almost none achieved by the deadline, leaving a year for testing (doubtful) and fixes any problems (such as a complete crash), tests it again, and the system survives, all it has to do is import one noncompliant piece of data from another computer, and the entire system could crash. So, to avoid this, compliant systems must break all contact with noncompliant systems. This destroys the larger system. Think "banking." Think "securities industry." What happens to the world's large, integrated, interdependent systems? They collapse.

If you hear that an organization is 2000-compliant, write to the president of the organization. Tell him that you have heard that his organization is 2000-compliant today. Ask if this rumor is true. If you get back a signed letter by someone in authority on letterhead stationery saying that the firm is 2000-compliant today, it might possibly be compliant. But don't take seriously any rumor. Here is a good rule laid down by an Irish programmer, Dermot Treacy: "Be warned, only believe half of what you see and none of what you hear."

Most Web sites don't deal with these sorts of problems. More of them should.

Some sites provide links to y2k articles. Another provides links and a brief summary.

On this site, I provide links, summaries, and my own analyses of selected documents that discuss at least some of these problems. The governments of the world are saying as little as possible. This is understandable. Their job is to prevent panic. To admit that the Year 2000 Problem is inherently unsolvable this late in the process might create panic. So, we are told very little. But enough is trickling out to let us know that this is no minor problem.

I am regarded as an apocalyptic fanatic. Why? Because I have this odd theory: Until at least ONE Fortune 500 level corporation and ONE government above the county level announces, "We are Year 2000-compliant; all of our programmers are now working on routine maintenance," the Year 2000 Problem is not going to be solved. I keep waiting for an announcement from a Fortune 500 company saying that it is compliant -- internal software, vendor-supplied software, and embedded chips -- let alone fully tested. Citicorp has 400 million lines; AT&T has 500 million lines. General Motors has two billion. Neither is finished, as of the end of first quarter, 1999. Yet this Web site is regarded as extreme by its critics.

The programmers tell us it is now too late to fix all systems. We must adopt triage: allow some systems to die. This is a counsel of despair. There is not enough slack in modern systems to permit triage. Just- in-time delivery doesn't allow triage. Neither does massive debt. Triage means the death of the system, especially the banking system.

Please use the "mail document" or "send page" feature of your Web browser to send any of my comments and links on this site to friends and colleagues. The more we can do to alert each other, the more people will take defensive personal action.

Here is where you should begin: a personal preparations list.

Click on the category that interests you. I have added a few introductory remarks in front of each list of links and in front of each link. Click the link or read the on-page entry to see if my comments are consistent with the evidence I offer.

When you are finished reading, printing, downloading, or e-mailing any document, click the "Return to Main Categories Page" link at the bottom of the page. Then you can do additional searches.

But, you may ask, what should you do to protect yourself? For a wonderful site loaded with specific information on personal preparation, click here. For women's concerns, visit Karen Anderson's site, Year 2000 for Women.

Next, at the bottom of the list is the category, "Discussion Forums." Click it to go to the forums. Some are open to everyone; some are closed. These are professional forums, where participants prefer to discuss technical or professional matters with a degree of privacy. While curious outsiders will no doubt invade these forums from time to time, it would be the decent thing to do to let people discuss their own profession's problems in private. Outsiders should spend their time on matters that will affect them directly and maybe catastrophically. There is not enough time remaining for anyone to waste it eavesdropping.

I added these forums six months after I put up this Web site. I was being flooded by letters asking me to give personal advice. I cannot possibly do this for everyone. Legally, it is unwise for me to do this for anyone. So, I have provided a way for serious people who take this Web site seriously to get answers from each other and from the moderators who run the specialized open forums.

Time is running out. To see how much time remains before January 1, 2000, click here. You have months less time than this to prepare.

To see missed dates and deadlines, click here.

To begin to prepare personally, visit this site's forums. For a long list of companies that sell survival gear, click here. Another practical site is y2kNet. See also the y2ksurvive site. But the Mother of All Survival Sites is this clearing house.

My comments on how churches should deal with y2k are sent out monthly by e-mail. To receive these reports, click here and request to be put on the Institute for Christian Economics mailing list.

Because traffic gets heavy on this site during peak hours, I have encouraged others to set up identical mirror sites. Click through, get their addresses, and post several in Bookmarks or Favorites. Then, if you can't get on this site directly, go to one of the mirrors. For more information, click here.

A good Web site on churches, charity, and y2k is the Joseph Project. Warning: this organization refuses to mention the obvious, namely, that some people who live in cities should move to safer, less densely populated areas that are not totally dependent on public utilities that may fail in 2000, especially water and sewer systems. The Joseph Project wants you to stay in the city to serve. If you're really called by God to do this, fine -- just as Christians may be called to serve as missionaries in Saudi Arabia (briefly). But there is another option: move while you still can. I did.

If you are a reporter who wants an interview with me, click here.

I suggest that you write down this site's IP number, in case the World Wide Web's domain name system ever gets scrambled: 206.67.48.127. Write it down where you will remember to look. Do this with any Web site you depend on. Hackers may disrupt the system again, as they did in early July. For a freeware program to locate the IP number for any domain name, click here.

I have classified the documents under the following categories:

Click Here to See Newest Links

Last Updated Categories 03-Jan-00 Introduction 03-Jan-00 Government 16-Nov-99 Taxation 13-Dec-99 Military 13-Dec-99 Martial_Law 03-Dec-99 Welfare_Payments 03-Jan-00 Banking 10-Dec-99 Telecommunications 13-Dec-99 Stock_Market 02-Nov-99 Litigation 22-Nov-99 Health_Care 10-Dec-99 Compliance 03-Dec-99 Testing 18-Sep-99 Imported_Data 03-Jan-00 Programmers'_Views 09-Dec-99 Noncompliant_Chips 10-Dec-99 Too_Late 11-Nov-99 No_Silver_Bullet 03-Jan-00 Domino_Effect 11-Dec-99 Personal_Computers 13-Dec-99 Shipping_and_Transportation 10-Dec-99 Power_Grid 13-Dec-99 No_Big_Problem 10-Dec-99 Personal_Preparations 09-Dec-99 Countdown_Clock 11-Feb-98 Discussion_Forums

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-- xyz (xyz@zyx.com), January 04, 2000.