“Can you imagine an inmate at the Saipan Detention Center thinking he will be
released on New Year’s Day in the year 2000 only to wake up to learn that the
computer has added another 100 years to his sentence.”

      I was thinking about the Y2K problem or the “millennium bug” as some call it.
This is the time some 16 months from now - at one second before midnight on
December 31, 1999 when the year 2000 is a mere “tick” away from beginning the
new century. A time of increasing concern that many worry about potential computer
failure when countless machines will not be able to read the two digit year “00” as
2000 but rather as the year starting the 20th century rather than that of the 21st.
In other words, slipping backward 100 years in time. It occurred to me that we in the
Marianas will be among  the first in the United States to know the full impact, if any,
of the failure of timing mechanisms and computer chips built into the world’s computer
systems. So, January 1, 2000, New Year’s Day, will be the day of reckoning. In only
500 days if anything goes wrong It will hit us a full nine hours before computer clocks
on the United States east coast register the date. With this in mind I became curious
if computer programmers would be interested in the area as a test site to evaluate
repercussions in the Marianas as a harbinger of potential computer crisis elsewhere.
The ominous date occurs on our side of the dateline on Saturday, (Friday in New York),
thus there is an entire weekend to evaluate the impact since the first working day on the
United States east coastwill occur on the following Monday (our Tuesday).
           A friend of mine sent me several comments made during a news conference of
the NationalPress Club in Washington where the chief economist with Deutsche Bank
Securities stated, “the world is so dependent on computers and so behind on repairs that
there is a 70 percent chance of a global recession. He predicted the U.S. economy would
decline by 4 percent.”
      "The Year 2000 problem threatens to push us into a global recession  as severe as the
one thatoccurred in 1973-1974."
      "We have to  recognize that even if we pull off a heroic fix here, we still run the risk that
the rest of the world is too far behind," he said. "Asia has a year 1998 problem.  Many of
their companies are trying to stay in business with 90-day survivalplans. They're too
distracted todeal with Y2K problems."
      A systems auditor with the Government Accounting Office is pessimistic about the
country'sability to solve the Y2K problem because of the embedded information links among
companiesand government agencies.  Another conference participant noted that the chain of
suppliers acompany relies on is asimportant as its own internal systems. One well known
American manufacturer with  almost 1,000 direct suppliers and more than 100,000 indirect
ones, wouldface the potential forassembly-line shutdowns and other major  disruptions if just
1 percent of its suppliers had computers that failed on Jan. 1, 2000. This individual is quoted
as saying, "onething is certain, unless the  proper steps are taken immediately by the world's
political and businessleaders,  because of the inter dependencies involved, a major heart attack
is likely."
      Some businesses,  states and the federal government's fiscal year 2000 begins in the first
and secondquarters of 1999. This could cause chaos. As pointed out during the conference,
the "big bang" will be January 1, 2000, when many computers andembedded  chips will either
respond ornot respond.
      What happened to present such a serious problem?
     To understand what occurred we must step back to a time when computers first began
appearingon the scene in many private businesses, stock exchanges and banks. In those days
data was codedand key punched on IBM cards. In order to save space on the card thereby
permitting more data to be placed on asingle card the number signifying years was reduced to
two digits, thus, the year 1950 became “50.”Theproblem that only came to everyone’s attention
several years ago was thatthere was a terrifying and almost diabolical “melt down” programmed
within many computer memories. As mentioned above,unless corrected in time - at midnight on
December 31, 1999 (the end of the 20th century) - all the computers will revert to “00” rather than
display the year 2000.  Havoc could reign throughout financial records buried with the electronic
mind of computers unless corrected in time. It has been estimated that billions of dollars are
required to correctthe problem to keep records from rolling back 100 years to the year 1900,
a date that began this century.
     While many people will forego the revelry of the evening and will be sitting anxiously at
computer mainframesall over the world at midnight on December 31, 1999 to monitor the impact,
a location in theMarianas may afford a front seat precursor and enough time to correct or at least
minimize a computer meltdown elsewhere in the world.

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