NO, FRIENDS, Y2K IS NO SCAM.

THERE ARE NO SILVER BULLETS

HAD the US had a more principled President, his term of office not hopelessly disrupted by tawdry sex investigations, the world would almost certainly not be facing quite such a dire future as Year 2000 now threatens. In late 1995 Senator Patrick Moynihan (Dem-New York) was briefed by computer fundis, warning of a looming computer holocaust because of embedded date chips likely to close down at midnight, December 31, 1999. They urged immediate US Government intervention and remedial action.

Moynihan, not a computer specialist, in turn asked the Congressional Research Committee to assess the potential impact of what was soon to become known as the Millennium Bug. Obviously feeling no sense of urgency, the CRC spent a leisurely six months on its investigations. But, at the end, its reports spelt out quite unequivocally that the problem was not only serious but gravely underestimated.

In July 1996 Moynihan sent a letter, together with the CRC report, to Clinton, urging emergency government action. Three months later he received a dismissive response from the Presidential Office of Management & Budgets.

Over the next 18 months Moynihan introduced a series of bills urging the US Government to treat the matter as one of extreme urgency. None passed. It was not till February 1998 that Clinton, a chronic procrastinator, belatedly signed the order chartering the President's Year 2000 Conversion Council.

Two and a half years had been lost, not least because Y2K must have seemed pretty inconsequential to Clinton compared with his impeachment problems. Had he, when first approached, made Y2K a national priority, the whole problem, or much of it, could probably be solved by now. To meet the crisis the US needed 120 000 computer tech-nicians with special training. There had been time to train these people but because of Clinton's procrastination, that opportunity was lost.

According to the US General Accounting Office, the Federal Government will now, at best, have 70% of its "mission critical" systems ready by the New Year's Eve dead-line. Nor is the world ready. What might have been re-duced to a speedbump could all too easily now become a global train crash. Please read on.