Y2K BECOMES A PROBLEM EVEN BEFORE 2000.
THE GOVERMENT WILL MOVE TO PUT
IN CONTROLS,
MONITORING AND /OR LIMITS
ON FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS .THIS WILL CAUSE EVEN MORE
PANIC AND WILL COMPLICATE THE ISSUES
AT HAND.
Y2K Lawsuit Bill Passed by Congress
Updated 6.59 p.m. ET (2259 GMT) July 1, 1999
By Jim Abrams
WASHINGTON — Exactly six months before the year 2000, Congress
emphatically endorsed compromise legislation Thursday to shield
businesses from a potential flood of Y2K computer-related lawsuits.
The
White House says President Clinton will sign it.
A House vote of 404-24 was followed several hours later by an 81-18
vote in the Senate.
"The year 2000 is right around the corner," said Rep. David Dreier,
R-Calif., one of the chief House sponsors. "We have a responsibility
to do
what we can to help people solve Y2K problems before anything goes
wrong."
The Senate's main sponsor, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called passage
"a
victory for the nation and for the continued prosperity of our economy
as
we enter the new millennium."
One of the top legislative priorities of the business community this
year,
the bill would give them 90 days to fix Y2K problems before lawsuits
could be filed. It also encourages mediation.
It also seeks to limit frivolous lawsuits by capping punitive damages
for
small businesses, narrowing the sphere of class action lawsuits and
ensuring that, in most cases, defendants will be held liable only for
the
share of the damages they cause.
"It will serve to minimize the potential explosion in litigation that
would
discourage Y2K compliance efforts, hurt American consumers and
weaken our economic growth," said Thomas J. Donohue, president and
CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The White House issued veto threats against the original bills that
emerged
from both the House and the Senate, saying they put too many restrictions
on legal recourse for consumers.
But the White House, while under pressure from consumer and legal
groups to oppose the legislation, was also hearing from another powerful
constituent, the high-tech industry, which keenly wanted it.
Earlier this week, both Clinton and Vice President Al Gore became
personally involved in negotiations to revise the bill to improve consumer
protections and make it acceptable to the president.
"We think this bill is critical to meet national priorities and the
president is
prepared to sign it into law because it is narrowly tailored to deal
with
litigation dealing with the Y2K problem," White House spokesman Jake
Siewert said Thursday.
"He will sign it. I don't think he'll sign it with enthusiasm," said
Senate
Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.
Daschle said he too was supporting it reluctantly. He warned that small
business groups that back it "may have to eat their words" because
they
could be in the greatest peril from losses incurred because of computer
systems that fail because they can't differentiate the year 2000 date
from
1900.
To meet consumer group concerns that lawmakers would use the Y2K
bill as a wedge to bring about far broader legislation protecting business
from product liability lawsuits, the Senate sponsors — Sens. McCain,
Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. — included
language that takes the bill off the books after three years.
The White House also emphasized that this legislation was one-of-a-kind.
"In the normal course of business, the administration would oppose
many
of the extraordinary steps taken in this legislation to alter liability
and
procedural rules," White House chief of staff John Podesta wrote in
a
letter Wednesday. "The Y2K problem is unique and unprecedented."
But Joan Claybrook of Public Citizen sharply criticized the White House
for accepting the final compromise, saying it "sells out consumers
and
small businesses in favor of high-tech and other business special interests."
The bill is H.R. 775.
Congressman worries about nuke plant safety and Y2K
Massachusetts Congressman Edward Markey warned on May 12 that
problems with emergency backup generators at the Pilgrim nuclear
station near Plymouth, Mass., may jeopardize safety when the Year
2000 arrives. Markey said a letter from Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Chairman Shirley Ann Jackson detailed some lingering concerns the
agency has, including repeated problems with backup diesel generators
which are required to keep the plant safe in the event of a blackout
of the electrical grid. Markey, along with many environmental groups,
fears the nation’s 103 operating nuclear power plants will experience
safety lapses due to Y2K glitches.
Fed printing billions of dollars
anticipating Y2K bank run
SAN ANTONIO, Texas (May 1, 1999 ) - The U.S. Federal Reserve is
distributing billions of new dollars to cover a possible run on the
banks due to fears of a Y2K calamity.
"The Federal Reserve Bank is literally printing up billions of
dollars to have available on the belief that people are going to pull
cash out of the bank," U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm said in a news
conference.
"We could literally have Americans pull billions of dollars in cash
out of the banks and store this cash in their automobile, their home,
in their backyards, waiting to see what is going to happen when the
date becomes Jan. 1 of the year 2000," he said.
Y2K Failures 'Inevitable'
07/27/99 (CNN) Year 2000 problem failures are inevitable both here
and abroad and will disrupt global trade, the U.S. State Department
warned the Senate's special committee on Y2K last week. "The global
community is likely to experience some Y2K-related failures in
every sector, country and region," said Jacquelyn Williams-
Bridgers, inspector general of the State Department. The year 2000
chiefs of major global corporations didn't dispute the State
Department's grim assessment in Senate testimony Monday.
EFFECTS OF Y2K COMPUTER PROBLEMS
TO LAST
WAY BEYOND THE START OF THE NEW YEAR
October 15, 1999
CNN reported: "A widespread misconception
that most Y2K problems will occur
between late December 1999 and
early January 2000 could leave companies
worldwide unprepared to deal with
outages that happen outside that time frame, an
analyst has warned. ‘The real
period of risk has not been well understood,’ said Lou
Marcoccio, a Gartner Group analyst
that specializes in Y2K issues. Gartner gave a
presentation titled ‘Year 2000
World Status’ at the company's ITxpo '99. Many
companies are making arrangements
to have additional IT staff on duty and extra
inventory stocked up in late December
1999 and early January 2000, but do not seem
to be extending those precautions
much beyond those dates, Marcoccio said. ‘Most
companies believe they only need
to worry about supplier interruptions and failures
occurring on January 1, 2000,’
he said. Yet, Gartner predicts that about 25% of Y2K
related problems would arise during
the fourth quarter of 1999 and 55% throughout
2000, with some more cropping
up during 2001, Marcoccio said. ‘Most failures will
occur when date-forward transactions
are run, and they are not all run in early 2000,’ he
said..."
ALREADY 1 IN 3 LARGE BRITISH FIRMS
BITTEN BY
MILLENNIUM BUG
October 19, 1999 JVIM
Newsbytes reported: "A third of
major companies in the UK have already experienced
information technology (IT) problems
as a direct result of the Y2K Problem, a report out
today says. The report, a joint
initiative between Adam Associates, the disaster recovery
company, and Taskforce 2000, the
UK's industry-sponsored Y2K agency, says that 31
percent of the UK's Top 1,000
firms have been had experience of Y2K-related problems.
As a result of their experience,
the report says that 84 percent of 1,000 companies in the
survey say that are preparing
for serious problems on their IT systems. Ninety-seven
percent said they were preparing
for systems outages, while 86 and 84 percent,
respectively, said they were preparing
for telecommunications and power outages...The
survey found that 92 percent of
respondents believe that problems may arise from
outside their organization. In
addition, 82 percent said that they were preparing for loss
of buildings and facilities..."
