Teasley, who attended a recent meeting of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, says that they were told that total worldwide Y2K costs, including litigation, could top 1.5 trillion dollars. For reference, total retail sales in the US for 1996 were around 2.6 trillion dollars. The only protection is due dilligence. The problem, according to de Jager, is that there's no good way to tell who is and isn't practicing good Y2K behavior, the real information is not accessible. He offers some general guidelines, however.
Utilities are a high risk, banks a better risk, manufacturing is also at high risk.
And for at least one sector, de Jager thinks the government should get involved. He believes medical software should be checked, and that it needs to be addressed nationally, not case by case. Maybe by now you're starting to suspect the experts are overstating the problem. Perhaps things won't be as bad as people think. But there are early indications that it is a very real problem.