North Carolina bank gets compliant. Story:

http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/news/story56398.html

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You might think "well, this is good news!" I say it's horrible. This is one of the few small handful that have actually made it. Those few that have are the ones that started years ago.

"Last week, First Virginia Banks Inc., the largest independent banking company with headquarters in Virginia, -- it's in Falls Church -- announced it has finished testing its most critical computer systems and the systems will work come Jan. 1, 2000."

Note that they've been working on it for 7 years.:

"First Virginia recognized the Year 2000 problem in the early 1980s when it realized that some long-term loans that would stretch into 2000 couldn't be calculated through that date, Bowman said. "

"The Y2K "problem" that has become a household word generally has to do with whether a computer can handle a four-digit date, i.e., 2000. Most computer programs have used only the last two digits. First Virginia tackled the problem over the past seven years, spending more than $22 million to upgrade systems, he said."

Does mean they are A-OK? Not if bank runs spread. They will still get shut down. They are also part of a system of world banks that could spread bad data.

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Latin America's Banks are Toast. Story:

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/108/nation/Latin_American_nations_fear_Y2K_disastersP.shtml

Latin American nations fear Y2K disasters Governments slow to realize the severity of computer glitch

By Frank Bajak, Associated Press, 04/18/99

OGOTA - Uncertain their radars' Year 2000 computer problems will be solved, air-traffic controllers in this Andean nation are taking refresher courses in guiding planes the old-fashioned way - with radioed position reports and paper charts.

Federal bookkeepers, meanwhile, may have to switch to paper ledgers until their computers are fixed.

With a handful of exceptions led by Mexico and Chile, Latin American governments were late in grasping the severity of the ''millennium bug.'' They now realize they lack the time, money, and programmers to forestall potentially crippling public-sector failures when 2000 arrives.

In the United States, where tens of billions of dollars have been spent on ridding computers and other equipment of the glitch, failures are expected to cause disruptions akin to a bad snowstorm.

''For us it could be like a volcanic eruption,'' said Hernando Carvalho, a Colombian civil engineer and lawmaker who began surveying government readiness in December and found it woefully lacking.

Among Latin politicians, Carvalho is a lonely voice trying to raise consciousness where little exists.

World Bank specialists and independent analysts say Latin and Caribbean governments can now do little more than focus on preventing disasters brought on by the Y2K problem, a legacy of the days when software writers saved space by expressing years with two digits. That means an unfixed computer won't be able to tell 2000 from 1900 and might shut down in confusion.

Like most governments in the developing world, Latin officials are feverishly working on plans for skirting unreliable computer systems to ensure the delivery of essential services like water, electricity, and public payrolls.

''Basically everybody's in the same boat. They're only focusing on critical systems and contingency plans,'' said Rafael Hernandez, an information specialist with the World Bank.

Last year, when many say the Latin governments should have been investing heavily in Y2K fixes, the Asian financial crisis hit their economies hard. Now they are short of cash.

Media coverage of the Y2K bug has been scarce in the region, and many presidents, including Colombia's Andres Pastrana and Argentina's Carlos Menem, haven't even mentioned it publicly.

''I don't want to be an alarmist, but we do want to prepare the people for reasonable precautions. There could be a run on banks,'' said Jim Cassell, research director for the information technology analysts GartnerGroup who has worked extensively in the region.

Gartner analysts predict half of all Latin American companies and state agencies will see at least one critical failure - from power outages to air transport interruptions - in Argentina, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Even worse off are Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Uruguay, they say.

Social unrest and paralyzed commerce are tangible fears. In this part of the world, ''the public doesn't protest with phone calls and letters - it riots and destabilizes the government,'' said Ian Hugo, deputy director of Britain's industry-backed Taskforce2000.

Argentina received a $30 million World Bank loan earlier this year to deal with Y2K problems, and the Inter-American Development Bank expects to open a $2 billion line of credit by May for confronting the bug.

Yet many of the countries scrambling to draft loan requests still do not know how much money they need, said Jamie Dos Santos, vice president for Latin America at Bellcore, a leading international Y2K contractor.

Latin American Y2K officials are divulging few details of their countries' progress. They know international investor confidence is at stake. Brazil, for one, is trying to meet the conditions for a $41.5 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund.

''Lack of confidence in a country's infrastructure could cause multinational companies to close their operations,'' a US Senate report warned in early March.

Among nations where officials have been more open is Colombia, where the government's Year 2000 Office, created in September 1997, just kicked into gear in December.

Managers of the state-run health care system are struggling to determine how to keep Y2K failures from scrambling the records of its more than 8 million patients. And public hospitals are beginning to inventory medical devices for bug-related defects.

Colombian aviation officials say their radar systems will fail without repairs costing more than $11 million, which the government says it cannot provide. Without radar, controllers will rely on voice communications and keep planes spaced farther apart, delaying flights.

Carvalho said foreign carriers will refuse to fly to Colombia unless the radars and other systems are fixed by July 1, after which US officials expect to begin releasing warnings about countries with worrisome Y2K status.

American Airlines, the dominant US carrier in the region, called Carvalho's claim speculative. ''We'll make those decisions when the time comes, and obviously safety is our major concern,'' said Martha Pantin, a spokeswoman for the airline.

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