Brexit and The Millennium Bug

Brextremists have, in recent weeks, been trying to divert obvious concern about the catastrophe that would ensue from a No Deal Brexit, by labelling it as Project Fear 2.0, and referencing, in that vein, the experience of the Millenium Bug.  It's a very bad analogy for them to use.

The reason the Brextremists have gone into overdrive in trying to divert attention from the catastrophe that would arise from a No Deal Brexit is obvious.  The government that is pushing through Brexit, and its Brexit supporting Ministers, have eventually been forced to publish a series of papers setting out what would realistically happen in the event of such a No Deal Brexit.  For anyone who actually takes the trouble to read these papers, it shows a pretty horrendous set of conditions that people in Britain would face.  Of course, that does not particularly bother the millionaire Brexit supporting Brextremists like Rees-Mogg, who can simply jump on a private plane or boat, and disappear off the Europe, or some tax haven, where their millions will ensure they have the food, healthcare, medicines and so  they require, leaving the rest of us to suffer from the mess they have created.  Nor will it affect the Brextremist Lords like Lord Lawson, who sit in the House of Lords, legislating on a Brexit that will affect all of us, but who themselves, live in their expensive houses in France!

The Brextremists cannot so easily dismiss all of the horror stories that are coming out in the government papers depicting what will happen in the immediate aftermath of a No Deal Brexit, as they could when others have been pointing out the same reality over the last year.  These are the same Brextremists who argued during the referendum campaign that negotiating a deal would be the easiest thing in the world, because the EU just couldn't do without Britain, that the Irish border was not any kind of problem, and the only real issue for negotiation was over Britain's financial settlement, because the EU needed Britain's money to make its budget balance.  The government's own detailed analysis now shows that the statements about food shortages, large rises in food prices, shortages of medicines, planes being grounded and so on, were not as the Brextremists claimed fear mongering, but are the necessary and inevitable consequence of a No Deal Brexit, and the consequent ending with no replacement of hundreds of agreements that make all those things possible.

This is an example of people who for years simply railed against something they were against, but who had no idea what they wanted to put in its place, unexpectedly getting their wish.  They never really expected to win the referendum, simply being able to continue putting out their nationalistic claptrap.  They have no idea what to do, and all of their claptrap is now being exposed for what it is, but it is the rest of us that will suffer.  That is gradually beginning to sink in, and the tide is quickly beginning to go out on the Brextremists.  They can only hold the line, by trying to deny the reality that is increasingly becoming apparent.

Rather than deal with the actuality of the consequences of a No Deal Brexit, as is being elaborated in the dozens of government papers now being produced, the Brextremists try to simply say its all fear mongering, and to back that up they refer back to the Millenium Bug.  Everyone said the world was going to end, at Midnight, December 31st. 1999, they proclaim, because the Millenium Bug was going to cause millions of computers to malfunction, which would cause planes to fall from the sky and so on.  But it didn't happen, they announce moronically.  You see, it was all fear mongering, and the same will be true about Brexit.

The trouble is some of us remember Y2K, and the reality.  The potential problems of the Millenium Bug had been identified several years before.  The problem basically came down to this.  Computer chips  first began to be introduced on a large scale in the 1980's.  It never had to be considered in the architecture of these chips, what would happen, when the last three digits of the date instead of incrementally increasing, instead went to zero.  Moreover, many programmes, which require the date in order to function, had never been set up to deal with a date that began with a 2, and where the last three digits went backwards.  It was not any kind of fear mongering that led to concern that when the date flipped over on Midnight December 1999, all these computer chips, and computer programmes would malfunction.  It was a reality.

I was involved at the time, analysing what computers and what computer systems, in my workplace might be so affected.  That was happening in workplaces across the globe.  Wherever non-compliant Y2K computer chips were identified, they had to be replaced, usually requiring also a replacement of the hardware in which the chips were embedded.  Software also had to be reprogrammed so that date functions were able to cope with a date that included the year 2000.  Without all this work having been done in the year's running up to Y2K, the Millennium Bug would indeed have stopped computer systems working, it would have brought everything to a standstill, including stopping aircraft avionics systems, and air traffic control systems working properly, not to mention all of the computerised banking systems, Cash Machines and so on.  It would have caused global chaos.  So the Millenium Bug is a very bad example for the Brextremists to use. 

Chaos was avoided over Y2K, only because the necessary large-scale replacement of computer chips, the reprogramming of computers and so on, was undertaken in the years prior to December 31st, 1999.  That involved the expenditure of billions of pounds to replace hardware and software, it required large-scale investigation of potential problems, and planning to take action to avoid those problems.  Indeed, all of the money that had to be spent, across the globe, replacing non-compliant chips, and upgrading software, was one reason that the share prices of technology companies soared more than most in the later years of the 1990's, and sank sharply in March 2000, after all of those upgrades had been effected.

But, there was another reason that those share prices rose sharply, along with other asset prices, particularly in the latter part of 1999.  If you look at the prices of units in a Technology based fund, such as the Aberdeen or Henderson Technology Fund in the last few months of 1999, and the first two months of 2000, you will see a phenomenal rise, even compared with the large rises those funds had during much of the 1990's.  Partly it was based upon all of these billions of dollars that was being spent on dealing with the Millenium Bug, but the other reason was that, the Federal Reserve, along with central banks across the globe, were worried about what would happen not just at New Year 2000, but what might happen in the weeks before and after that.

The Bank of England, as Marx sets out, in Capital, always put more currency into circulation at different times of the year than others.  It did so, because at certain times of year, people have to take money out of their bank accounts to pay quarterly, or annual bills; at certain times, like Christmas, when people spend more money, more currency needs to be in circulation.  If it isn't available, it can create a panic, which creates an even greater tendency to hoard cash, which leads to a credit crunch.  In 1999, central banks were concerned that, even if there was no problem whatsoever that materialised, as a result of all the preparatory work that had been done, people would not necessarily know that.  A natural reaction would be for people to hoard cash, in case problems arose.  So, central banks pumped additional liquidity into circulation in the later months of 1999, and that additional liquidity went into inflating asset prices, particularly of technology stocks that were already rising sharply.

So, the Millenium Bug is also not a good example for the Brextremists to choose for this second reason.  In order to deal with the likely reactions of millions of people to take money out of their bank accounts, and out of ATM's, not just the usual withdrawal for Christmas and New Year, or even the additional amounts required for spending in a once in a millenium celebration, but the likelihood that they would take out even more money to protect themselves against any breakdown in computer systems etc., the central banks increased their already high levels of money printing, and put it into circulation, further hyper-inflating an already hyper-inflating range of asset prices, from property to shares, to bonds, to art, wine and so on.  The necessary preparations for Y2K, involved measures that a few years later contributed to the financial meltdown of 2008.  In fact, as soon as central banks tried to claw back some of that excess liquidity they had had to inject to deal with Y2K, it resulted in the Stock Market crash of 2000.

But, Y2K, was unavoidable.  Only if computer chips and computer programmes, from their inception, had been aware of the potential problem, could it have been avoided.  Brexit certainly is avoidable, it is deliberate self-harm that is being inflicted.  Ahead of Y2K, billions of Pounds, Dollars, Yen etc. was spent dealing with the inevitable problems that would have ensued and caused chaos.  That is the only way that chaos was avoided.  But, next to no measures are being undertaken to deal with the inevitable catastrophe that will befall Britain as a result of a No Deal Brexit.  The Brextremists instead of identifying the problems, and taking action in advance to deal with them, as happened with the Millennium Bug, have simply buried their head in the sand.  They do not want to even look for such potential problems, let alone recognise the requirement to spend the billions required to deal with them.