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Comment: |
This is the testimony of James Shelton to the House Banking Committee (Feb. 5).
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Much as financial institutions would like to offer complete assurance of a smooth transition to the new millennium, we cannot. Even with all the testing that we shall do, complete certainty is unattainable. For example, we are all implicitly assuming that basic telecommunications services will not be seriously interrupted. Without these dedicated networks, embedded within the overall phone system, we would be helpless. Naturally, we have every confidence in the remedial work of these highly sophisticated service providers, but we have seen in the past how disruption can spread. At least in this case, we know the source of the problem well in advance, but its pervasiveness creates a new level of complexity. No test will substitute for the actual turn of the clock.
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