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The head of the Australian Stock Exchange has pointed out the obvious: if small businesses fail, they will pull down the economy.
The Party Line is that small businesses won't make it, but large businesses will. This supposedly is because large businesses have lots of money to spend to correct y2k. Ignored: they have gigantic legacy systems that cannot be fixed merely by spending money.
It will do large businesses no good to get compliant if their small business suppliers aren't compliant. The problem is the division of labor. Big firms are completely dependent on smaller firms. General Motors has
85,000 suppliers. If they aren't compliant, and if replacement firms cannot be found in 1999, GM is a cooked goose.
This is from the AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW (April 21).
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The slowness of small business to undertake Y2K remediation threatens the survival of large businesses as well as their own, according to Mr Maurice Newman, the chairman of the Australian Stock Exchange and of the Government's Y2K Steering Committee. . . .
SMEs' [small & medium-sized enterprises] failure to assess their Y2K requirements and plan remediation activities posed a threat to their own business future, he said.
"But large firms also depend on SMEs. If SMEs fall over it will affect all businesses and the economy."
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