Silence engulfs the room as everyone stares at the television, watching and waiting for the clock to strike 12:00. When the clock chimes either the world will remain perfectly sane or erupt in utter chaos. Banks could plummet into darkness and money could be sent across the globe, and in the morning people could be left with the bare minimum of nothing. The world could also remain organized and orderly, but to the people this seemed too easy. When groups of people begin believing and acting upon irrational fears and beliefs, mass hysteria can turn a group of sane people into crazy survivalists, willing to do anything and everything. There were two aspects of Y2K (year two thousand) a financial panic and a global panic. The financial panic was
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In this country banks have all the power, so it seems completely logical that if the banks falter, so does the country. Banks earn money by applying interest to loans, “Instead of the rate of interest for one day, the computer would calculate a rate of interest minus almost 100 years!” (Trembly). If the interest rate were to revert back one-hundred years, meaning the banks would lose money, people would not have been able to earn loans easily; therefore, the economy would experience a snowball effect downhill. If the researchers would not have been concerned and taken precautions a catastrophic depression would start the new …show more content…
While this seems like a good argument, under the surface it really falls apart. There is no certainty that the computers would have crashed, in fact, some places reported minor glitches. In Chicago, a bank had a problem transferring $700,000 in tax payments, fortunately the problem was fixed and the money was returned. Credit card companies created duplicate transactions because some merchants did not update their systems to the new Y2K software. Throughout Spain and the United States, there were seven nuclear reactors that experienced minor glitches. Due to a last minute fix there were major delays in airports all over the east coast in the United States. If the bug was not cured then the spread of Y2K could have been ten times worse: nuclear reactors could have exploded, banks could have lost money, and power could have gone out all over the
In this country banks have all the power, so it seems completely logical that if the banks falter, so does the country. Banks earn money by applying interest to loans, “Instead of the rate of interest for one day, the computer would calculate a rate of interest minus almost 100 years!” (Trembly). If the interest rate were to revert back one-hundred years, meaning the banks would lose money, people would not have been able to earn loans easily; therefore, the economy would experience a snowball effect downhill. If the researchers would not have been concerned and taken precautions a catastrophic depression would start the new …show more content…
While this seems like a good argument, under the surface it really falls apart. There is no certainty that the computers would have crashed, in fact, some places reported minor glitches. In Chicago, a bank had a problem transferring $700,000 in tax payments, fortunately the problem was fixed and the money was returned. Credit card companies created duplicate transactions because some merchants did not update their systems to the new Y2K software. Throughout Spain and the United States, there were seven nuclear reactors that experienced minor glitches. Due to a last minute fix there were major delays in airports all over the east coast in the United States. If the bug was not cured then the spread of Y2K could have been ten times worse: nuclear reactors could have exploded, banks could have lost money, and power could have gone out all over the