The Contrarian's View is published 11 times per year on a mostly-irregular schedule, and the views expressed are those of the author and editor, Nick Chase. Because nobody can predict the future, results of past suggestions or recommendations are no guarantee of future results. Material in this publication may be freely quoted provided proper attribution is given to its source. Subscription rate: Free on the Internet through the World-Wide Web service at Assumption College. Using your favorite Web-browsing program, Open URL http://nick.assumption.edu. Mailed paper subscriptions, one year for $39 to The Contrarian's View, 132 Moreland Street, Worcester, Massachusetts 01609. There is a limit of 50 paid subscribers at one time; please check for availability before sending any money. Sorry, Visa and Mastercard are not available. Overseas subscription rate, U.S. $54. Unsolicited material sent to us by UPS or by courier other than the postal service is refused and returned to sender! Phone: (508) 757-2881
When the blizzard-anniversary stories appeared in early February, nobody's 250-word articles were printed. It appears the material sent in was used
only for the feature writer to extract useful information to write the
blizzard story in her own words. What a fraud. You know my approach to
this press dishonesty - publish it myself! So here it is, the story of
how we survived the Great Blizzard of '78:
I thought that was overdoing it - to allow 2-1/2 hours for what is normally a 25-minute trip - but, looking out the window, I could see it was snowing with a fierce intensity even though less than an inch had accumulated, so I took her advice.
Though I normally took back roads to and from work, this time I decided I'd better take Route 9, on the theory it would be better plowed and salted. About 4 PM, I reached the Route 9 on-ramp (at Flanders Road); I looked to the left and saw that the Route 9 traffic heading west was completely stopped! Well, so much for Route 9. I took the usual two-lane back roads through Westboro and Northboro, which I could negotiate pretty well in my rear-engine Volkswagen beetle even though the snow was slippery.
When I turned onto I-290 west at Church Street in Northboro, the wind was blowing so hard that all three lanes of the interstate were completely clear of snow. No problem, I thought, as I tooled along at 50 miles per hour - until, suddenly, WHAM!, I hit a giant, 10-foot-high snowdrift stretching across the entire road. Fortunately, it wasn't very deep - maybe 5 to 7 feet - so I emerged on bare pavement, moving considerably more slowly, on the other side. I was lucky; there could have been a car buried in that snowdrift. I cautiously made my way to Worcester with the other, sparse traffic on the road, which was moving steadily, though slowly.
When I reached the Lincoln Square off-ramp, it appeared to be blocked by stuck cars, so I exited at Central Street and headed back toward Salisbury and Grove streets via Main Street. By then it was about 4:50 PM, and I had hit Worcester's rush hour. It took me more than an hour to traverse the half-mile to the studios on Faraday Street; I arrived just three minutes before I was to be on the air.
During my shift, as my wife was about to return home, a friend who had left the studios earlier in the afternoon and who had just arrived at his home in Holden called to advise her to wait until the end of my shift at 8 PM so we could leave for home together. The roads were clogged with stranded cars, he said, especially Gold Star Boulevard, and it would be dangerous to drive alone.
Shortly after 8 PM, we exited the studios onto Faraday Street. The wind was so ferocious that most of Faraday Street, including where my car was parked, was bare; but there was a 20-foot-deep, 3-foot-high drift blocking access to Lancaster Street, which had been plowed, and a smaller drift blocking access to Grove Street (then being plowed) and enveloping part of her Valiant.
I decided to "make a run for it". I backed up as far as I could on the bare pavement, revved up the Volkswagen, and drove as fast as I could through the 20-foot-long drift. I got stuck about three feet from the further edge and had to shovel out the car to finally reach Lancaster. (We both always carry shovels in our cars in the wintertime.)
By this time my wife had her car shoveled out and a plow on Grove Street had made that street accessible. Ordinarily we would take Salisbury Street into Holden to reach our home, which at the time was in the center of Hubbardston, but I had doubts that we could make it up that little hill beyond Park Avenue, so we decided to take Route 122A (Grove Street), which is less hilly and, as a state highway, would probably be better plowed.
We headed out Grove Street until we reached Gold Star Boulevard - only to find that it, all four lanes of it, was completely blocked by stuck and abandoned cars. That left Salisbury Street, so we took the little U-turn onto Park Avenue and headed south. When we reached the traffic light at Park and Salisbury, we could see that some cars had been abandoned on the incline, and a few were trying to get up the hill and failing. I couldn't see how we could possibly make it up that hill without hitting another car or getting stuck behind someone else. We turned around and went back to Gold Star Boulevard - it was our only hope.
No luck. It was really, really blocked - no way could anybody get through that wall of abandoned cars. Just then a state plow came by, drove the WRONG WAY through the opposing little U-turn (the one that puts you from West Boylston Street south onto Gold Star Boulevard north), then drove the WRONG WAY on one-way West Boylston Street until it reached Route 122A (Grove Street). Well, I thought, if the plow can do that, we can, too, and that's what we did.
We lost the plow in Holden, but even so, the driving was not difficult except for the poor visibility. But when we reached Route 68 in Holden near the Rutland line, it was a different story. The road looked like it had not been plowed in hours; the snow was a foot deep, and rutted. And, unlike today, there were virtually NO HOUSES on this stretch of road between Route 122A and Hubbardston center. If we broke down here, we truly would be stranded.
It was slow going; we crept along about 15 miles an hour, with me in the lead, trying to stay on the roadway in near-whiteout conditions as the drifting snow filled the ruts in the road, our only clue as to where the road went. Just north of the Route 62 intersection in Hubbardston, we caught up with another snowplow headed our way and we followed it. At the foot of the hill, by Brigham Pond, just before the climb into the center of Hubbardston, we paused while the plow drove back and forth, hacking its way through a giant snowdrift that the now-hurricane-force winds, funnelled through the Brig-ham pond opening, had deposited on the roadway. As the plow disappeared up the hill, I drove through the hole in the drift made by the plow while my wife waited. When she could see I was clear, she accelerated through the rapidly-vanishing opening and up the hill. She said she drove through a foot of snow where the plow had scraped the road clear just minutes before; no doubt, within ten minutes the storm had completely replaced the drift the plow had disturbed. We later found out that this was the very peak of the storm; if we hadn't caught up with a plow just then, we probably never would have made it home (in our cars, anyway).
At the crest of the hill we saw that no plow had even touched Brigham Street, with our driveway only fifty tantalizing feet away down the street. So for the next hour we literally shovelled two feet of snow off the street in a path wide enough to get our cars to our driveway. The blizzard thoughtfully had drifted the snow in a way that left our driveway, front porch and front door completely clear, so once we had the cars finally in the driveway, about 11:15 PM, we collapsed, exhausted, in our warm and comfortable home, sweet home.
We thought we'd had rough going until we saw the pictures of the abandoned
cars that kept Route 128 closed for a week, or heard of the people who
died of carbon-monoxide poisoning on interstate ramps. Then we realized
how fortunate we were to have made it home safely during that most treacherous storm.
Some of them are smoking. Others are drinking coffee. Some carry hip flasks full of Jack Daniels or other calming liquids. They try to make small talk, but the topic of discussion keeps coming back to the same theme: Why the millennium bug is "a problem," but not that big a problem. Surely not a huge problem. Not the kind of problem that Gary North says it will be.
"Sure, there will be bankruptcies," the assistant manager of a local branch of a large multinational bank says to the guy next to him. "Medium size banks will be in trouble. Small banks are as good as dead. But our New York office has big bucks. Throw enough money at a problem, and you can solve it, right? We all know that. The Federal Government has been built on that principle, and it works OK, doesn't it? So, after we're compliant, we'll just buy up those noncompliant banks for pennies on the dollar. No problem."
The guy next him has all of his life's savings invested in a medium-size bank. "But how can a big bank swallow a small bank without swallowing its bad computer code? How can the big bank's compliant computers keep from getting reinfected with the small bank's noncompliant code?"
He reaches for his hip flask. "And what about the depositors in all those small banks? Will they be hurt?"
"No problem," says the local banker. All accounts are insured by the FDIC up to $100,000."
"But I read on North's site -- I mean months ago, not recently -- that the FDIC isn't compliant. Neither is the Treasury Department. How can the FDIC insure the nation's banks if it isn't compliant? How can the Treasury back up the FDIC's promise? With what?"
The banker looks down at his feet. "Yeah, I saw that, too. That guy North is a menace to society. The government ought to shut him down. I believe in free speech and the first amendment and all that, but there are limits, you know."
At that point, the first speaker of the evening comes to the microphone.
"Hi. I'm Billy. And I'm a Northoholic."
Group: "Hi, Billy."
"I'm really grateful for these meetings. I can come here and tell my story and not feel ashamed."
Group: "Tell us your story, Billy!"
"I began going to North's site last summer. At first, I was just curious. I had heard about it. I planned to limit myself only to the stuff on banking."
"But then, last September, I clicked GOVERNMENT. That led me to WELFARE PAYMENTS. Then it was MILITARY. By that time, I couldn't stop. I tried. I just couldn't."
"Every night after work, I began coming back to his site. My wife complained, but I told her I was doing it for her and the kids. Then I started doing it at lunch breaks. Last week I found I was on North's site by 7:30 in the morning. I'd come in early to the office. I hadn't told my wife why. I knew I had to do something. If you start going to North's site as early as 7:30 in the morning, you've got a problem. A big problem. That's why I'm here."
Group: "We're with you, Billy!"
"What I need is someone I can call on the phone, any time of the day or night, someone who used to get onto North's site twice a day, three time a day, but who has cut back to only once a week."
Group: "It won't work, Billy. You have to go cold turkey."
"But it's not easy. The media are now picking up on y2k. I'm starting to see brief reports on national TV. Not many, of course. Maybe a five-minute piece with Peter Jennings. Tom Brokaw might give it three. Only Dan Rather has avoided it completely, but how long can he hold out? How long can any of them hold out?"
"And then I saw a reference to North's site in the New York Times. The Times!!! The electronic version even had a click-through to his site. Instinctively, I clicked it. I didn't think. I just clicked. I had sworn off North's site for four days. But I clicked. And there it was, staring me in the face. 'Gary North's Y2K Links and Forums.' It looks so harmless. No graphics. No Real Time Audio. No Java. Just text. Plain Old Text. People are lured into this, not suspecting what North can do with text."
"I thought to myself, 'I'll just check out banking. Nothing else.' I just wanted to know if the banks are going to make the Federal Reserve's next reporting deadline. I wasn't looking for a silver bullet or anything. Just a reporting deadline. Besides, I thought, maybe the Fed has done something official. Maybe it has issued a report. Maybe it has a new video on y2k awareness. Something. Some good news. I swore I wouldn't read North's introductory remarks, where he makes the latest official action look ridiculous. I'd just click straight through to the document. It was 9:15 a.m."
"The next time I was aware of anything, the cleaning lady was in the room. Everyone in the office had gone home two hours earlier."
Group: "We've been there, Billy. We know."
"I've tried everything. I used to send e-mails to him, telling him he's a fraud, telling him to read old Jonathan Edwards sermons on God's judgment, telling him anything I could think of to make him stop, make him take down his site. I even used four-letter words. I started used lots of periods...in between...words. Someone told me that's part of power communicating."
"Then I noticed that I was capitalizing some words. I mean the whole word, not just the first letter. Then whole phrases. You know what it means when you capitalize whole phrases in your e-mail?"
Group: "Bad netiquette, Billy."
"Not just bad netiquette. It made me look like a red-hot. You know: a fanatic. A man who was losing control. First it's all caps. Then it's [he looks pained] . . . it's . . . other bodily functions. I began worrying about my control over my precious bodily fluids."
Group: "Get control, Billy. You need to get control."
"But I couldn't. I couldn't. I kept going back. I kept telling myself, 'I can quit whenever I want to. I just don't want to.' But I did want to. I wanted to quit more than anything on earth. But I couldn't. Last week, I realized what had happened to me. I had become a Northoholic."
Group: "Welcome to the club, Billy!"
"So I thought I'd come here. I need guidance. I want to know how to quit. I want to hear stories of how someone has quit, and quit for good. That's why I'm here. I'll sit down now. Maybe someone with a personal testimony of hope will come up and tell me that I've got hope, too."
Billy sits down. Nobody says anything. Twenty-five men begin to squirm. They look at their shoes. Then, as happens every week, one by one, they start looking at their watches.
One of them thinks, "Maybe Greenspan has said something hopeful."
Another one thinks, "I'll bet the Bank of Boston has begun testing by now. I'd sure like to find out."
Another one thinks, "Maybe they've got a fix at Florida Light and Power."
More fidgeting. More silence. Then one by one, they stand. "Well, goodnight," one of them says to no one in particular. "I've got to get home to watch the playoffs."
The man next to him says, "Oh, yeah, the playoffs. I'd forgotten. I've been too busy watching the PBS series on the history of public sanitation. They're doing sewers tonight. I'd hate to miss it."
"The history of sewers?" asks Billy. "That sounds great. "Would you mind if I come over and watch it with you."
"Uh, well, this will be Sewers, Part II. You really need to have seen Part I. Maybe you can come tomorrow night. Besides, my wife hasn't vacuumed yet this week. She'd be upset if I brought someone home unannounced."
"Well, can't you call her?" Billy looks frantic. "I need to spend a night with a normal family, doing normal things. I need to see how someone who used to be addicted to North's site has broken free."
"Well, maybe tomorrow night. No, let's make it a week from tonight. After the meeting. That'll be good. OK?" He picks up his folding chair, folds it, and stacks it against the wall. Then he walks out of the room. They all do, one by one. Billy stands there. Alone.
And he thinks to himself, "I wonder if there's anything new on embedded chips."
He picks up his chair, folds it, puts it against the wall. "Next week.
I'll come back next week." But he knows he won't.
The stock market, everyone understands, is high by historical standards. - William Poole [president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, also sits on the Federal Open Market Committee]
We are living in an American economic renaissance in which opportunity is abundant, communities are getting stronger, families are more secure and more prosperous.... I'm encouraged by the underlying fundamentals and what I hope will happen is that we can avoid any kind of big swings in the market one way or the other by just steady, slow -- maybe not so slow, but at least steady growth.... It's impossible for me to predict the market, impossible for anyone to, or to characterize it.... But I'm pleased with the success of the market. I do understand the bubble theory. I think the best way to avoid having a big bubble that some day pops is to make sure that we have open information about where we are right now and the progress of the market is pretty well tied to the real progress of the economy. - Bill Clinton, April 30, 1998
And while it might be nice to think an investment bubble can level off and consolidate for several years to give fundamentals time to catch up, the human psychology simply doesn't permit it - never has, never will. - Jim Stack
Investors will stick with the stock market until it achieves exhaustion, which means pushing stock prices marginally too high relative to the level of cash that is being funneled into the market. At that point, the stock market will start to turn down. You must remember that we are in a mania - not a bull market. Normal bull markets ultimately end due to higher interest rates. Manias, on the other hand, end for no particular reason, as the 1980s stock market bubble in Tokyo and the 1920s stock market crash here have shown us. - Bill Fleckenstein
All the traditional old tools that Wall Street has been following are wrong, out of date, and they do not work. The dividend yield doesn't work and price/earnings ratios don't work. Also, specialist shorting, insider trading, I could go on and on. All on the garbage heap. - Joe Granville
The bubble that we saw in Japan is going to happen here. But, of course, that's a long way off. - Don Wolanchuk [This quote is a candidate for the Irving Fisher PHP Award for 1998]
The idea that today's investor is somehow "married" to the market is a ludicrous fallacy propagated by the mutual fund industry. - Marc Sexton
People who make bearish arguments based on history make a mistake. It's true that the dividend yields on stocks have always been higher, and that P/E ratios have generally been lower. But it's also true that if you bought the stock market five years ago, you've made a fortune. So you have to ask yourself: 'Is this fortune that I made something that happened because of true fundamentals in the market? Or is it just a bubble, like the tulipmania in Holland hundreds of years ago?' - Kevin A. Hassett [American Enterprise Institute scholar]
Bears will also be correct eventually because even as the Dow has run up to over 9,000, it is very typical in a secular bear market for it to return to levels far below its initial starting point. A move back down below 1,000 may sound insane at the moment.... but I truly believe that this is probable if (when) the bubble finally bursts. As I've said before, I don't feel comfortable making such dire predictions but, from everything that I have studied, this seems like the most likely outcome to the tremendous financial asset mania that has occurred over the past decade. In the near future, stocks will be shunned and the "buy and hold" mantra will be a distant, unpleasant memory. - Marc Sexton
The press has not picked up on it yet but houses are churning fast and there's a nervous feeling in the real estate market. I'm guessing that when they look back, they'll see that DC prices went up 20-30 % in 1998... that's assuming that the market crash doesn't happen this year. This may be a result of some people bailing out of the stock market after the 15 year run up. If so, we could see housing prices double as the Dow collapses. In DC, housing prices have been flat since the late 1980s. I'm guessing that a lot of the spare cash went to the stock market and those stupid things, Mutual Funds. - Cory Hamasaki
In a few years.... it will be fun to look back to the days when no one (hardly anyone) batted an eye to proposals that the Dow is undervalued with a P/E 24. It will all seem so obvious...after the fact. - Marc Sexton
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. - Thomas Jefferson
What's wrong with the press we have at present? In a word, journalists. Now, I must make an effort to be fair about this. Some of them are okay -- a few of them are just fine -- but, let's face it, most of them are jerks. - Edward Zehr
The fact is, that if he [Clinton] wants to fire Ken Starr, he can do it in the morning. And if he doesn't want to fire Ken Starr, he should tell his staff to shut up. Because there is something profoundly demeaning and destructive to have the White House systematically undermine an officer of the Department of Justice. And when I watch these paid hacks on television, to be quite honest, I am sickened by how unpatriotically they undermine the Constitution of the United States on behalf of their client. - Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia)
Between 1994 through 1997, WEBSTER L. and SUZANNA W. HUBBELL had income in excess of one million dollars, but made only modest tax payments to the Internal Revenue Service toward paying their 1989-1992, 1994 and 1995 tax liabilities. During the same period, the HUBBELLs spent over $750,000 on personal items. The HUBBELLs liquidated assets and spent down their funds which reduced the amount of money available to the IRS and other government creditors.... SUZANNA W. HUBBELL and CHARLES C. OWEN provided false and incomplete financial information to the IRS to conceal the existence of a bank account and to conceal the existence of trusts of which the HUBBELLs were beneficiaries. - From the grand jury indictment
I am the one that has to explain this to Marsha [Scott, presumably]. She says you are not going to get any public support if you open Hillary up to this ... Well, by public support I know what she means. I'm not stupid.... [Marsha] is ratcheting it up and making it sound like if Webb goes ahead and sues the [Rose law] firm, then any support I have at the White House is gone. I'm hearing the squeeze play. - Suzy Hubbell [in a March 26, 1996 taped phone conversation with imprisoned husband Webb]
So I need to roll over one more time. - Webster Hubbell [same phone conversation]
We asked that the president urge Ms. McDougal to testify truthfully to the grand jury, and that was declined. We made those communications to the White House counsel's office repeatedly, and those requests were rejected. We are trying through every possible means to get complete and truthful information from people so we can evaluate the facts and determine what actions, if any, should be taken and what crimes, if any, should be prosecuted - Charles Bakaly [aide to Kenneth Starr]
Whether intentionally or not, the President has injected himself into this matter. He has made public comments that could reasonably have had the effect of bolstering Ms. McDougal's obstinacy, thereby impeding this federal investigation. - Kenneth Starr [in an Oct. 23, 1997, letter]
I'll see anything you got. I won't answer your questions. - Susan McDougal [before the Arkansas grand jury]
In my opinion, the state charges amount to the Arkansas version of Omerta.... I mean, David Hale spent 19 months in prison and now they're trying to put him in prison for about the same thing for 8 years. Basically, that makes this a capital case because he'll never get out of there alive... You've got David Hale facing a sentence in state court that's probably designed to kill him. - David Bowden [David Hale's lawyer]
Starr's staff [is preparing] a massive report on Bill Clinton's behavior as Arkansas governor and as president. That report, expected to go to Congress soon, will allege that Clinton was involved in organized criminal activity. - John Crudele [New York Post reporter]
Of the several White House visits logged when Monica Lewinsky claimed she was visiting Betty Currie, Currie was on vacation.... Caught on the Tripp tapes, Lewinsky repeatedly describes how Currie is used as a cover. The [Washington] grand jury has been played these passages. - Matt Drudge
We have no problem saying we have a political agenda. Having a president who engages in consensual sex outside of marriage and is good on many of the issues may be better than having a president who's terrible on all the issues. - Kathy Rodgers [Legal Defense Executive Director, National Organization for Women]
I don't like Bill Clinton. In fact I hate the lowlife son-of-a-bitch. He's a national disgrace. He is, without a doubt, the most disgusting degenerate, in a city full of disgusting degenerates, ever to occupy the highest office in the land. Even Richard Nixon, for all his faults, had redeeming values. Bill Clinton has none. He's a smirking con man, a lying creep who abuses power, women and anyone fool enough to work for him and display any loyalty. Those foolish enough to follow him often end up in jail, disgraced, disbarred or dead. - Doug Thompson
....to describe him as mediocre does not do full justice to his baseness. With the Cold War over and the economy sound, America can entertain mediocrity in Washington. Clinton is something else. He is corrupt, and the corruption seeps into all that he does. - R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
When you hear the other side squealing like a bunch of pigs then you
understand you're getting somewhere near the truth. - Dan Burton (R
Indiana)
I have no proof that the sun is about to rise on the apocalyptic millennium of which chapter 20 of the Book of Revelation speaks, nor do I have proof that, armed with flood and catastrophe, the Four Horsemen will arrive on Jan. 1, 2000. Yet, it is becoming apparent to all of us that a once seemingly innocuous computer glitch relating to how computers recognize dates could wreak worldwide havoc. - Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.)
In fact, the time to solve the entire problem is gone. We do not have enough time. We have to set our priorities, and say these portions of the Y2K problem have to be solved because they're mission critical ‹ these are ones we will get to if we have enough time.... but if we don't get to them we'll survive.... [public utilities] could cripple us if they're not fixed.... We have to make sure the power grid operates.... There's already a major national telecommunications firm that has announced to its customers that it will not guarantee a dial tone on any of its telephones outside the United States and certain parts of Europe after Jan. 1, 2000. - Robert Bennett (R-Utah)
....I want everyone to feel a little nervous and very concerned and active.... I do not want people gratuitously deciding that they're going to take action that they otherwise wouldn't, because if millions of people start to do that we'll have economic dislocation.... You can count on one hand the number of countries around the world that are anywhere near where the US is... While I don't subscribe to the doom-and-gloom view that it is even too late to begin, it is clear that time is running out. - John Koskinen [Chairman, President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion. Nick's comment: And this guy is paid by the government to be an optimist! My feeling is, you're entitled to gratuitously decide to do whatever you'd like to do about Y2K - you do not need permission from anybody in government.]
The plain fact of the matter is that the situation is so freaking bad that if Koskinen spoke the truth the whole country would be convulsed in panic tomorrow.... If one is speaking the plain truth, one does not need to perform a balancing act. One simply speaks the plain unvarnished truth. But Koskinen knows that the truth is so bad that he will play word games to hide the truth, and at the same time pretend that he is telling the truth. If everything was going along well, he COULD NOT CAUSE PANIC. What he is saying in the very clearest terms is that the TRUTH is worthy of a panic response. It is THAT BAD. - Paul Milne
My experience as a crisis manager in both the public and private sectors is that once leaders ask the right questions, the work gets done. - John Koskinen
Koskinen is still a throw-away. He'll end up in a policy study institute, collecting a check until he lands a job as the door-opener for a lobby. No one expects him to solve anything. He's there so that Algor can remain pure and untainted. President Gore will address the nation, the 2001 state of the union address, "My fellow Americans, all 35 million or so of you. We have nothing to fear except -bzzzzt- -weroop- itself. I'm addressing you by radio from the U.S. Capitol (temporary) somewhere in Appalachia... my advisors tell me that we will -bzzt-zzzt- power within 90 days and TV transmissions soon after. I have some good news for you, the lend-lease shipments from Canada are on -Wooo-up..." - Cory Hamasaki
The Year 2000 (Y2K) problem will touch much more than just our financial system and could temporarily have adverse effects on the performance of the overall U.S. economy as well as the economies of many, or all, other nations if it is not corrected. The spectrum of possible outcomes is broad, for the truth of the matter is that this episode is unique. We have no previous experiences to give us adequate guideposts. A few economists already are suggesting that Y2K-related disruptions will induce a deep recession in the year 2000. That is probably a stretch, but I do not think that we shall escape unaffected.... The financial difficulties of Japan and other Asian economies certainly have diverted attention and resources in those countries from the Y2K problem, increasing the risk of a Y2K shock from one or more of these countries.... The Federal Reserve completed assessment of its applications in 1997; our most significant applications have been renovated; and internal testing is underway using dedicated Y2K computer systems and date-simulation tools. Changes to mission critical computer programs, as well as system and user-acceptance testing, are on schedule to be completed by year-end 1998. Further, systems supporting the delivery of critical financial services that interface with the depository institutions will be Year 2000 ready by this July and a depository institution test program will be in place at that time. This schedule will permit approximately 18 months for customer testing, to which we are dedicating considerable support resources. - Edward W. Kelley, Jr. [Member, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System]
Our greatest Year 2000 concern is for HCFA's Medicare program. This program is run by over seventy external contractors.... that process 900 million fee-for-service claims payments annually for nearly 33 million Medicare beneficiaries. Nearly one quarter of the external Medicare contractors have not yet completed assessments [only 6% of a fix] of their systems.... the agency's ability to exert financial leverage over its contractors to direct funds toward such activities as Year 2000 compliance is limited.... we remain greatly concerned about the need for a faster pace of progress by Medicare contractors in meeting our Year 2000 goal. - John Callahan [Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services for Management and Budget and Chief Information Officer, before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Committee on Ways and Means, May 7, 1998]
I.... just in the last day have talked to two.... people. One works for the VA Hospital. I asked him how they were doing in relation to y2k. He responded that they were working on it. I replied that they won't be ready in time. His retort: "I know", and he shrugged his shoulders and walked away. - Ivan Schaffel
SSA has completed.... more than 90 percent of the renovation phase of its [mission-critical] Year 2000 program. We are in the process of testing all of our renovated systems in our Year 2000 Test Facility. We are on schedule.... to have all systems implemented into production in January 1999, providing a full year for post-implementation review.... SSA has also renovated 67 percent of its non-mission-critical systems.... As of today, twenty-one [state disability] DDS systems have been renovated, tested and implemented.... Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington DC, Wisconsin, and the Federal DDS. - John Dyer [Principal Deputy Commissioner, Social Security Administration, before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Committee on Ways and Means, May 7, 1998]
With respect to the Department of the Treasury.... we have not completed a thorough assessment [only the first 6%] of the Department's Year 2000 readiness.... Treasury's Financial Management Service (FMS), for instance, as the government's cash receipts and disbursements agent and financial manager, represents the crossroads of financial activity for the federal government.... FMS is falling seriously behind schedule in converting some of its systems.... Treasury's milestone for assessing all mission-critical systems was July 1997. However, as of the end of March 1998, FMS still had not completed assessing the compliance of five of its mission-critical systems. For example.... FMS is awaiting a contractor proposal for renovating a system called.... Government On-Line Accounting Link System I. This system plays a critical role in processing interagency payments and collections.... For non-IT systems, Treasury's components are farther behind. As of mid-March, systems in 3 of Treasury's 14 bureaus had still not been inventoried [1% of the work!]. Of the systems in the 11 inventoried bureaus, about one quarter remain to be assessed. - Joel C. Willemssen [Director, Civil Agencies Information Systems, Accounting and Information Management Division, U.S. General Accounting Office, before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Committee on Ways and Means, May 7, 1998]
The Treasury therefore has at least 95% of its project ahead of it, as of late March, 1998. It's over. No matter what the media say, the brokerage houses say, the politicians say, or your wife's brother-in-law says, it's over. The U.S. government will collapse in 2000. T-bills: dead. T-bonds: dead. Money market funds: dead. Retirement programs: dead. U.S. dollar (electronic version): dead. Foreign central banks that allow the Federal Reserve to store their gold, and who buy T-bills instead of holding gold: dead. The end of the 300-year-old central banking experiment is at hand. We're going back to an all-cash society. I know. It can't be true. It just can't. Can't, can't, can't. Watch. - Gary North
The IRS currently supports 127 mission-critical application systems comprising 85,000 modules and approximately 50 million lines of code.... As of April 24, 1998, the IRS has renovated 83 of its 127 mission-critical systems and tested 62. Fifty-nine of these systems were placed back into production. - Charles Rossotti [IRS Commissioner, before the House Ways & Means Committee, May 7, 1998]
....the senior management of the IRS continues to express confidence that they'll finish their Y2000 project on time -- but everyone seems to have forgotten the staggering escalation in the IRS's Y2000 budget. The IRS told Congress in the spring of 1997 that it would need approximately $200 million for its Y2000 effort, and gradually escalated it to $400 million, then $600 million, and then $800 million during the remainder of 1997. The new IRS commissioner, Charles Rossotti, now says that the overall cost could be as high as $1 billion. Meanwhile, the recently departed CIO, Arthur Gross, has expressed some concern in an interview with Dr. Edward Yardeni that the IRS's ability to operate effectively could be seriously compromised by Y2000 problems in the telecommunication companies. Forget about Y2000 for a moment, and imagine that this was an "ordinary" IT project. If someone told you that a project had increased its estimated budget by a factor of five over the space of a year, what would your reaction be? Wouldn't you be concerned that they had underestimated, underscoped, and understaffed the project from the very beginning? More important, would you have any faith in the senior manager's optimistic prediction that everything is going to be finished on time? If so, you may also be one of those people who believes that pigs can fly.- Ed Yourdon
The financial collapse will occur when the investors wake up and realize what's coming.... July 1, 1999 is the start of the IRS fiscal year 2000. The IRS won't be able to process W2s and 1099s at that time. It has 100 million lines of code and isn't even awarding a Y2K conversion contract until October 1998 -- plus the delays from the usual lawsuits.... I predict that no vendor will bid on this impossible contract. - Tim May [retired Intel physicist]
Our research indicates that governmental agencies in the United States -- state, local, and federal -- are generally at about 15 percent complete in their year 2000 projects.... There are, of course, some agencies further along than others, however the majority are still far behind in their work. - John Bace [Research Director, Gartner Group, Inc., before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Committee on Ways and Means, May 7, 1998]
We've gotten classified reports [on the Federal government and Y2K] that are so disturbing they had to be classified. - Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.)
Let me sketch my FAA domino effect. The FAA will not make the deadline. Airline transportation will be shut down in the United States in January, 2000. I am not saying "if." I am saying it will be shut down. I am not qualifying my prediction in any way. The shutdown will bankrupt the U.S. airline industry. No airline will survive without a government bailout, and the government itself will be bankrupt. Similar airport shutdowns in other nations will bankrupt their airline industries. The travel industry will face widespread bankruptcies. If the banks are still open -- highly doubtful -- they will suffer horrendous losses when their loans to the airline industry go sour. The destruction of just-in-time air freight deliveries from Asia will bankrupt most of the U.S. microcomputer industry. Retail sales will be delayed, then lost. Just-in-time payment by customers will disappear. No more telephone order, "I'll pay by credit card now; then you build it for me" sales. It will be "build it for me; then I'll pay . . . if I decide I still want it." Massive forecasting risk will be shifted back to retailers, who are not prepared for it. That change will wipe out today's leaders in the industry, which are not set up to sell this way. The world economy will crash in late 1999, if for no other reason than because of the FAA's failure to meet its deadline.... The blindness of the forecasters in 1997 and 1998 will be heralded in generations of history textbooks. It is incredible that investors do not see what's obviously coming, but they don't. - Gary North
Obviously, the millennium bug is going to be somewhat disruptive, but somehow I think we'll manage to muddle through and I doubt that we're going to have a year 2000 recession because of it. - Bruce Steinberg [chief economist with Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York]
It is a sales tactic. They scare everybody, tell them that the world is going to end, then sell an alleged solution to prevent that from happening. We call it the Fear Tour.... This is similar to the way that Internet security products were sold. You tell lots of horror stories about how hackers will steal all their stuff, and then you sell them a firewall. - Jim Balderston [industry analyst at Zona Research Inc.]
Most political, business, and community leaders, as well as nearly all of the media and the public, have no idea how great the risks of those two missing digits might really be; most of the greatest risks have not yet even been inventoried and assessed, let alone mitigated; there's already too little time to fix everything; the clock is still ticking. OK, so the preponderance of the evidence supports depression. - Leon Kappelman [professor, University of North Texas]
My Web site has moved from "ignored" (early 1997) to "crackpot" (late 1997) to "extreme" (early 1998) to "alarming" (this has now begun). It will move to "controversial" (late 1998) to "comprehensive" (early 1999) to "widely quoted" (mid-1999) to . . . nothing (2000). - Gary North
I work for one of the big facilities management companies in the UK and spend my time on client sites looking after their VMS systems.... We have been informed that we "must not" discuss Y2K with the clients on pain of something nasty. If the client asks us about Y2K we have to go talk to the contract manager and he will talk to the client. I have been on the client site for 3 years on a daily basis and have only seen our contract manager once this year.... We are building VMS test systems.... for Y2K testing of the home build systems - and I "must not" discuss Y2K with the client. I am allowed to say that "I have installed a version of the operating system on the test machine that Digital says is year 2000 compliant", but I "must not" discuss Y2K. Management madness - running scared of litigation. How do they expect us to work with one had tied behind our backs? - anonymous programmer
As the owner of a mainframe programming company doing Y2K Cobol conversion and compliancy, and.... someone involved in the "trenches" fixing date fields, let me assure you the problem is worse than the doomsayers predict. - David Jeffers
Every dollar spent for the year 2000 crisis will be "under duress," because at the end of the day there is no perceived business benefit to the fix. Thus all expenditures will have to be justified five ways from Sunday, and managers will squirm and reallocate so as not to affect the bottom line.... This explains the tremendous amount of money spent so far on "assessing," the paltry amount spent on "repairing" and the far paltrier amount spent on "testing." Given the amount we have yet to accomplish, and the time we have left to accomplish it, the progress businesses have made on this problem is criminal. - Bruce Hall [vice president of marketing for Trigent Software Inc.]
ATT coincidentally had two machines fail and lost their Frame Relay network. Now Melbourne is down... anyone else think the clowns are whiz banging Y2K fixes into production systems? Let's face it, it's starting. Chimps, knuckle-dragging 6-week wonders are slinging code like hash, going hoo-hoo-hoo, and slamming patches onto machines. You people who thought Windows 95 was unstable, you ain't seen nutting yet.... If people are truly making Y2K fixes and are introducing new bugs, we should start hearing about outages every day. - Cory Hamasaki
Had a friend who works for the local EMS roll the date forward on both the ambulance and the fire truck at his station to a date after 2000. Guess what? Took sending a factory rep out to repair the damage. - Hugh Davis
We will not be open on Saturday, Jan. 1 [2000], I'll tell you that. - Loraine Gornick [senior project manager at Sears]
I spoke yesterday for quite some time with the president of Fort Worth Technologies. They are involved in the reprogramming efforts related to Y2K. Their largest client happens to be Burlington Northern/Santa Fe. He relayed to me that this railroad company supplies 80% of this nation's fuel and coal. In their effort to fix their code, they were on schedule to complete their task prior to 2000. In the past two years they completed 10 million lines of code and in the last couple of months discovered an additional 33 million lines of code. This now puts them 2 years behind in completion. The entire company realizes that there is no hope in finishing this code. The president just sold his house and doesn't know where he's going, but he knows what the future holds...and it doesn't look good. - Greg Griffin
There was no alternative to [railroad] switch yards until computers and reliable computer-driven communication. That's why they used switch yards. The Arlington-Alexandria (note it spanned two counties) switch yard was huge. It was next to extremely expensive office buildings and hotels, almost walking distance to the Pentagon. All heavy freight on the East coast used to pass through this switch yard, it was like the Fed Ex hub except they were juggling freight cars instead of overnight letters. The yard is gone, torn up, converted to stores and this just happened last year. It is physically no longer possible to switch freight cars without computers.... Sure, you can run a few trains manually, but at a fraction of the capacity of the current computer-managed system. ...and please don't suggest that we can move freight by truck. I've driven the Washington Beltway, Wilson Bridge, I-95, Route 50, I-395, mixing bowl. That's not possible either. I-95 is the major N-S corridor and it runs at capacity. The distributed switching system is the only physical way to move freight.... As to what will happen? I don't know. They don't have the systems staff to pull 10 years of deferred maintenance and testing in 606 days. They can't do it by hand, they don't have the switch yards. If they try to do distributed switching using people, the trains and cars will get lost. Not that there are a lot of people around who understand trains. Like everyone else, they've been dumbing-down, cheaping out the staff for 10-15 years. That game is over but the corporations, horn-hairs don't seem to realize it. - Cory Hamasaki
At work we had a problem with a future retirement date when Personnel put in a future retirement date in the year 2000. On the next trial payroll run, that person's check was rejected because the programs claimed that person had already retired (after all, year 00 precedes year 96). One of our programmers spent six weeks fixing future dates in the Personnel and Payroll systems, but when he was finished he said that it would be a disaster come the year 2000 because there is a lot of logic that would produce wrong results. I am much more inclined to believe the programmer that was digging through the code that the code is Y2k-hostile than I would believe.... that the code is Y2k-ready just because that system can now handle transactions with effective dates in the year 2000. Likewise, our touch-tone registration system accepts VISA cards with year-00 expiration dates just fine. However, we know there will be massive data problems come the year 2000 if that system is not changed because massive numbers of students who do not pay immediately would be purged out of classes for non-payment, even though supposedly they have 5 business days to pay. Is that system Y2k-ready? You might think so because of the acceptance of year-00 expiration dates in charge cards, but those of us who have been in the code know better. - Mark A. Young
We are building a 'command center' that will be the clearinghouse for date-related problems.... We're asking questions like, 'What if the systems fail and the phones don't work? Will we use walkie-talkies?' We're thinking of putting lanterns in the Old North Church -- one if it works, two if it doesn't... .We have backup systems and tapes, so we won't lose the data, but it's possible we might not have access to it for a while.... We have to determine if we will handle those functions manually, and how long we can afford to be without them. - Steven McManus [communications manager at BankBoston]
My girlfriend's bank processed her car payment debit order 17 times at the end of February. Later I learned from other people using this bank that they did the same with all debit orders. To me it looks like faulty Y2K code going into production. - Nick Roux
The bank I work for is probably not going to make it. The demand deposit system (which I'm working on) might just make it if some radical changes are made, but other systems are in much worse shape (especially time deposits).... If there is a major financial downturn.... at the same as management finally realizes their pie-in-the-sky deadlines are not being met then I think the point will be reached where it makes better business sense to close the bank and transfer its assets and liabilities to another. It may even be the bank examiners who force this on us. Ironically, the programmers who wrote this stuff in the 1960s will be proven right in their prediction that it won't be running in 2000! - anonymous programmer
No bank in any country will even be able to give even the most mild assurance of compliance. They are coming to realize that they are wholly at the mercy of the rest of the industry and their vendors. This translates out to complete non-compliance and an ironclad guarantee of massive bank failures world-wide, no ifs, ands, or buts. It is not a bank by bank problem. It is a systemic problem and it CANNOT be corrected in time. The bank runs WILL occur. It is not a matter of 'if' they will occur. It is only a matter of 'when', and if you are STUPID enough to leave your money in any bank at all. Most people WILL be that stupid and that is why there will be such a great problem when the banks crash. What is better for you? Be the first one to get your money out and causing a crash? Or waiting for everyone else to do it and you lose everything because you were so generous to act the fool and wait for others to suck the banks dry? In either case the crash will happen. It does not matter what causes it. It is going to happen one way or the other. It is only a question of whether or not you are stupid enough to wait. - Paul Milne
There are many, many computer programmers who keep telling us that y2k can be fixed. But they refuse to ask themselves the obvious question: "If my employer cannot get access to money from the bank, and if I can't get my money from my bank, how can I stay on the job to fix this?" The answer is obvious: he can't. He will walk. They will all walk. They will not complete their y2k repair projects. When they start figuring this out, the programmers' exodus will begin. When the public finally figures it out, the panic will begin. It will be a panic like no other in human history: all over the industrialized world, the same terror of the same threat will spread. - Gary North
Eight months ago I "retired" (self-funded) from a large NYC medical institution. The management there, in a word, was incompetent. Four years back I had raised the issue of y2k problems, and at the time I left in disgust, they had refused to admit that they even had a serious problem. They have absolutely no documentation, and the department is run by people who never coded a line of programming in their lives. A new manager proceeded to have 28 programmers out of a staff of 25 leave within a period of 18 months.... Absolutely no improvements in coding technology over 13 years! Training was refused on all quarters for mainframe people and only client server people got training. Sure -- they will resolve their Y2k problem -- at a cost of 10 to 15 million, but four years back it would have cost maybe .5 million. The management there will never tell senior management of their ineptitude. I finally left when my boss wanted me to write 16 programs in four working days. He wanted me to use "faked up test data." When I suggested that if there was a problem in testing that we wouldn't know if there was a data problem or a code problem, he threatened me with insubordination. This boss never coded anything in his life. That's when I decided to leave. I was nice by calling it retirement. I have no regrets. ....The pathetic thing here is the tremendous leverage that this hospital gave the few incompetent MIS managers. Hospitals have traditionally had less than three days' cash flow. If they don't resolve their y2k issues, the.... incompetent MIS managers will be responsible for the jobs of 8000 innocent employees as the place shuts down.- George R. Greamer
I have been a computer professional for 24 years. I spent my first 20 years developing and managing I.T. systems for a Power Utility, 7 years of which were directly involved in the development of software for Power Stations in the area of Power Station Plant Management, Data Logging, Metering, Maintenance Management Systems, LoadFlow analysis, Transient Stability and Short Circuit analysis. I am currently the Year2000 Project Manager for a Police Service agency in Australia. This rather unique mixture of roles has placed me in the rather uncomfortable position of being well aware of what the Year 2000 Problem is all about and how it affects a Power Station. Unfortunately I recall seeing many instances of 2-digit year fields in the Power Station environment. This concerns me greatly. Data Logging systems feed directly into maintenance management systems which are designed to shut down items of equipment when maintenance is not carried out..... The sudden incidence of "00" will cause many of these systems to FAIL.... Hence the probability of most or all Stations being affected at the same time by the Y2K problem is VERY HIGH. This could lead to blackouts of weeks if not months..... A truly catastrophic scenario with major impacts on society and our own families. - Joseph Sgroi [Australian programmer]
Power companies have thousands of embedded chips in their equipment, and the fact is that most of them will not be tested before Year 2000 problems begin to affect them.... There is a real possibility that we are going to have blackouts throughout North America. - Kent Morgan [director of marketing at Saver]
Every test I have seen done on an electrical power plant has caused it to shut down. Period. I know of no plant or facility investigated to this date that has passed without Y2K problems.... Things like this come out and the mass media gets ahold of it -- you're going to have shortages because of panic. How to communicate this to the public needs to be addressed. - David Hall [embedded-systems consultant, Cara Corporation]
Our entire society is fed by 3% of the labor force.... When this dependency is disrupted, by lack of: electricity, fuel, laborers, transportation, packaging facilities, etc. etc. THE FOOD STOPS FLOWING IMMEDIATELY. Panic buying wipes out existing stocks. No more rolls in. A degraded functionality assures mass starvation and the violence that will be spawned by it. It does not assure a 'degraded' amount of food will reach everyone. - Paul Milne
There is no question that the remediation has failed. We are 607 days from the event and only a very few organizations have taken this seriously. I have inside information on a few companies and public information on a few more, based on this limited sample, my odd ability to assess the mess, guess my best, be a pest... it looks like one company in 10 will be ready. But the denial is still raging. - Cory Hamasaki
Denial has several stages: 1. It can't be true. 2. There is a small problem. 3. There is a fairly big problem, but "men" can solve it. 4. You're making it worse by warning people. 5. You should be silenced. 6. It's Jan. 3, 2000, and I need food. I know you have food stored. You owe me food. 7. You see this gun? - Gary North
We're going to see a tremendous Luddite response to this crisis. Survivors will be searching out computers to destroy them. - Allen Comstock
[French] Y2K awareness is very low, even among my IT fellows. Some private banks seem to be well on their way for their Y2K projects, but everybody in reality is focused on the EMU... [The] situation in all [government] administrations is appalling: They either are in denial or plan carefully... to postpone the remediation. They have plenty of time (they think). But nobody cares for the moment. When you know how overwhelming, arrogant and stoopid public administration is in France, you may easily imagine what will happen. The collapse of the French IRS is written on the wall. Their numerous mainframes and applications won't be Y2K-compliant. For the moment they don't suspect it. - "Jacques Dilbert" (pseudonym)
Japan will melt. - Peter de Jager
Let me go on record publicly with what those in the know are thinking and saying privately. We are very worried.... The focus of conversation among those best versed in this issue is about how we are going to clean up after what appears now to be an inevitable train wreck. As a society, we are on the point of conceding failure. Those unwilling or unable to move off the track are numerous. Federal agencies. State governments. Local and municipal governments. School districts. Private sector industries. Small and mid-sized companies. Critical infrastructure players. And most foreign nations. It's crazy. It's frustrating. It cannot be happening. But it is. Now the "smart" questions have shifted to concentrate on contingency planning, crisis management, and liability. Lawyers are circling, and that is not a good sign. Failure is not part of the American fiber. Yet after this transition to the new century, society may have to admit that here was a situation it saw coming. Everyone understood its hard deadline. Everyone appreciated its worldwide scope. Everyone realized its massive potential to cause harm. And everyone let it happen.... Given where the federal government stands today, I feel very confident in predicting that some mission critical government systems will fail -- perhaps as early as January 1, 1999.... the General Accounting Office also shares this assessment. - Harris N. Miller [President, Information Technology Association of America, before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Committee on Ways and Means, May 7, 1998]
In the beginning we had all sorts of assurances that things were going fine,that they were taking things 'seriously'. President Clinton publicly stated that not a single government system would fail. Sally Katzen, disgraced OMB peanut-head, said that Y2K would be a non-event.... Then they said that they would be able to remediate their mission-critical systems. A laugh riot to anyone who can do grade school math. Then 'triage' became the buzz word; and buzzed right on out the window. Then 'mitigation'.... Oh, what was next? Oh yeah, oh, yeah, contingency plans..... Now telecoms are finally figuring out that they have major problems with switching gear. Electric utilities, on the whole, have not even completed assessment of their embedded systems. There is not enough time left to do even a fraction of what would be necessary to maintain electricity. The horrible upshot of all of this is what? Fed Reserve Governor Kelly says it "could shave a tenth of a percentage point off annual economic growth in the next two years." Boy! That is enough to scare the bejeebers outta you!! A whole tenth of a percentage point. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Run Away! Run Away! This is why no one is preparing, on the whole. They have no reason. The government is not telling the truth. Corporations are not telling the truth. All the way down the line. And no matter what they do say, it is always in the most lame, watered-down language filled with maybes, mights, ifs and coulds..... All the good thoughts and positive thoughts do not change the facts. There is not enough time left to repair even a fraction of what would need to be done. The governing authorities are completely powerless to do anything. They cannot 'cause' remediation to be accomplished. - Paul Milne
After hearing about the Millennium Bug and writing a term paper on the subject a 15-year-old female friend of mine decided to have intercourse for the first time. She found a school boy and did the deed. She said she didn't want to miss out on the sex part of life if things go bad. She also said practicing sex could be a good survival profession. - David J. Ulmer
You can have sex without electricity or public utilities...if I understand
the mechanics involved. What's the rush? - Byron Craig
We've been waiting for the meltdown for a long time. We shouldn't have
more than a few more months' wait - autumn at the latest, more likely in
the summer.
Comment on "Timer's Trend": We're on the SELL signal generated May 6.
(Bear market early warning?)
______________________________ TIMER'S TREND _________________________________
Mon 9 Mar 98 . | .# | 8567.14 | . + *
Tue 10 Mar 98 . | . # | 8643.12 |~.~+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Wed 11 Mar 98 . | . # | 8675.75 | . + *
Thu 12 Mar 98 . | . # | 8659.56 @| . + *
Fri 13 Mar 98 . | . # | 8602.52 | . + *
Mon 16 Mar 98 . | . # | 8718.85 |~.~~+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Tue 17 Mar 98 . | .# | 8749.99 | . + *
Wed 18 Mar 98 . | . # | 8775.40 |~.~~+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Thu 19 Mar 98 . | . # | 8803.05 | . + *
Fri 20 Mar 98 . | . # | 8906.43 |~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Mon 23 Mar 98 . | . # | 8816.25 |~.~*+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tue 24 Mar 98 . | . # | 8904.44 | . + *
Wed 25 Mar 98 . | .# | 8872.80 | . + *
Thu 26 Mar 98 . | . # | 8846.89 | . + *
Fri 27 Mar 98 . | # | 8796.08 |~.~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mon 31 Mar 98 . | . # | 8799.81 | . + **
Wed 1 Apr 98 . | . # | 8868.32 | . + *
Thu 2 Apr 98 . | . # | 8986.64 |~.~+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Fri 3 Apr 98 . | . # | 8983.41 | . + *
Mon 6 Apr 98 . | .# | 9033.23 |~.~~+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Tue 7 Apr 98 . |# . | 8956.50 | . + *
Wed 8 Apr 98 . I # | 8891.48 |~.+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thu 9 Apr 98 . | . # | 8994.86 | .+ *
Mon 13 Apr 98 . | # | 9012.30 |~.+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Tue 14 Apr 98 . | . # | 9110.20 |~.+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Wed 15 Apr 98 . | . # | 9162.27 |~.~+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Thu 16 Apr 98 . I# . | 9076.57 |~.~+*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fri 17 Apr 98 . | . # | 9167.50 | . + *
Mon 20 Apr 98 . | .# | 9141.84 | . + *
Tue 21 Apr 98 . | .# | 9184.94 | . + *
Wed 22 Apr 98 . | .# | 9176.72 | .+ *
Thu 23 Apr 98 . I# . | 9143.33 | .+ *
Fri 24 Apr 98 . #I . {| 9064.62 | + *
Mon 27 Apr 98 * . #I . | 8917.64 | +.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tue 28 Apr 98 . #I . | 8898.96 |-.~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wed 29 Apr 98 . I # | 8951.52 | - *
Thu 30 Apr 98 . I . # ]| 9063.37 |+~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Fri 1 May 98 . | . # }| 9147.07 |+.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Mon 4 May 98 . | . # | 9192.66 |~.~+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Tue 5 May 98 . I #. | 9147.57 | . + *
Wed 6 May 98 . I# . {| 9054.65 |~.~+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thu 7 May 98 . & . | 8976.68 |~+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fri 8 May 98 . I .# | 9055.15 | + *
Mon 11 May 98 . I #. | 9091.52 |+. *
Tue 12 May 98 . I #. | 9161.77 |+.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Wed 13 May 98 . I #. | 9211.84 |~+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Thu 14 May 98 . I# . | 9172.23 | + *
========================================================================
{, } = "Timer's Trend" (4% and 10% exponential) SELL ({) or BUY (}) signal
NEXT ISSUE - will appear about June 29.
/Nick Chase