Thanks again. Mr. Michael Medved's derogation of the Y2k threat started this. It was all a fraud, he charged.
To be fair, there was quite a hullabaloo raised over electrical systems and such. That turned out to be unwarranted, I believe.
The worldwide total is almost implausible. I know that some (most?) U.S. entities bundled other changes with Y2k remediation. So a lot of additional work got done.
You're probably right. As with any crisis, the tactic is often to bury a bunch of other things in the number to qualify for scarce budget dollars. Additionally, I'm sure some systems were just totally scrapped for brand new systems. Regardless, the numbers are huge. If the number was only half, it would be $100 billion. Still a whole lot of money.
BTW, I've always thought Medved was a just another useful idiot.