CNN just showed an excerpt of Ed's letter & his web site (the part where he was suprised when he logged in yesterday & things were more stable than anticipated. Ed Yardeni (Chief Economist)sent out his new year's letter today & apologised - he said he was wrong, but that's what he really believed.

-- No matter where you go (there@you.are), January 02, 2000

Answers

If you think Yardeni apologised, why not post his statement?

-- Dave (dannco@hotmail.com), January 02, 2000.

I doubt it. Mr. Yardini never said the lights would go out. He was always between a four and five. A 4/5 is a recession based on interruptions to the supply chain. What has happened to indicate that this is still not likely? Where's the link?

-- Michael (mhgentry@prodigy.net), January 02, 2000.

Re-read his letter. Like almost everyone, he's going to wait until the systems settle in a bit before re-assessing the risks.

Link

I am impressed and pleased by the smooth transition into 2000 so far. At this time, there are no significant Y2K problems around the world, especially in the late starters. As a result, the risk of disruptions to global just-in-time supply chains, which has been my number one concern, seems less likely. Nevertheless, the risk remains that some of these systems might still experience malfunctions and failures in coming weeks. If no significant problems occur by the end of January, then I will concede I was wrong about a Y2K global downturn and change the odds of a recession-vs-expansion from 70-30 to 30-70. The IT community deserves most of the credit for the uneventful century date change. John Koskinen, the US government's Y2K man, was especially effective in coordinating the Y2K remediation process both in the United States and around the world. Looking back, I certainly don't regret my efforts to raise awareness. Y2K was a big problem. Hopefully, in the next few weeks we will find that it has been mostly fixed.

Ed Yardeni January 2, 2000

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), January 02, 2000.