IP: anyone have a dime -- from educom

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

ECONOMIST PREDICTS Y2K PROBLEM WILL CAUSE RECESSION
In an op-ed piece, Edward Yardeni, chief economist and managing director of
Deutsche Morgan Grenfell says that problems arising from the Year 2000
computer glitch could cause a major recession, as businesses fail and
government agencies become incapable of delivering basic services, including
tax collection, welfare payments, national defense and air traffic control:
"The likely recession could be at least as bad as the one during 1973-74,
which was caused mostly by a disruption in the supply of oil.  Information,
stored and manipulated by computers, is as vital as oil for running modern
economies.  If information is harder to obtain, markets will allocate and
use resources inefficiently.  Market participants will be forced to spend
more time and money obtaining information that was previously available at
little or no cost...  Furthermore, a 2000 recession is bound to be
deflationary.  The U.S. may experience a $1 trillion drop in nominal GDP and
a $1 trillion loss in stock market capitalization."  (Wall Street Journal 4
May 98)