|
Robin Guenier of Taskforce 2000 has sounded the warning: delay the introduction of the Euro. But since Great Britain is not in the Euro system, his warnings will be ignored. The central banks have an agenda, the creation of Europe's New World Order. They are not going to let a minor disturbance such as y2k delay their schedule.
Those who say that the U.S. banking system will be compliant in 2000 have no example of a compliant bank, let alone 13,000 of them. But even if we get 13,000 compliant banks, how will they resist recontamination from Europe's banks, even assuming that Europe's banks survive the bank runs of 1999? And if our banks' computers shut out Europe's banks' noncompliant computers, what happens to international banking?
Martha Bennett of Giga says the EMU will cause chaos in 1999, and it will be worse in 2000.
That is a powerful word, chaos. It has a nice ring to it.
This is from TECH WEB NEWS (Feb. 24).
* * * * * * * * *
Postponing the introduction of a pan-European currency would significantly help tackling the year 2000 date change problem. So says the head of a campaign set up by the British government to promote awareness of the millennium computer problem.
Organizations face "certain muddle and possible disaster" if the creation of a pan-European currency is not delayed from its scheduled date of Jan. 1, 1999, according to Robin Guenier, head of Taskforce 2000, in an article to be published next month. Germany, France, and several other countries are to abandon their individual currencies and share a single currency -- known as the Euro -- by 2002, under the European Monetary Union plan drawn up by the European Union. However, the countries will effectively share a single currency from Jan. 1, 1999, when their exchange rates are frozen.
The task of preparing time-sensitive computer equipment for the millennium date change "is probably the biggest computer job ever" for some organizations, and there is "barely enough time for either job," says Guenier in the article, to be published in Computer Weekly, a United Kingdom business magazine. Postponing the introduction of the Euro would make a significant contribution to "overcoming the threat" of the year 2000, he added.
On average, only 11 percent of small to medium-sized businesses in the European Union have acted on the IT implications of introducing the Euro, according to a report published earlier this month by the U.K. branch of accountancy Grant Thornton. European Monetary Union will require reprogramming of most companies' financial computer systems. . . .
But the problems governments would experience if the Euro's introduction date were changed are too great, and the date is unlikely to be changed, said Martha Bennett, vice president of research in Europe, at Giga Information Group. "They won't do it," Bennett said. "It will go ahead regardless because some financial institutions are so far down the track that lawsuits would follow any change."
The European Monetary Union is going to cause chaos at the beginning of next year, and the millennium problem will cause an even bigger problem at the beginning of 2000, Bennett said. "But politics will at times override all sense. We're dealing with an issue of political will, and the rest," the computer industry, "will have to follow by example."
|