August 16, 1999

Year 2000:
Backwards To The Future

n an unprecedented move, the Clinton administration last week froze the personal assets of all United States citizens and businesses to avert what President Clinton called "the greatest threat to national security our country has ever faced: a run on banks and other financial institutions in anticipation and fear of the date change from 1999 to 2000." The move is seen as a follow-up to the recently announced government plan to monitor private-sector communications networks. A highly placed source added that Vice President and Inventor of the Internet Al Gore is about to unveil a plan to postpone the date change for 6 to 9 months beyond Dec. 31, 1999, to allow a "blue-ribbon panel" of unidentified but "highly credentialed" experts to gauge the "mood" of the country to see if such a "reality postponement" would be effective.

While some cabinet members and members of Congress looking to prognosticatorially profit from the to-be-lengthened "year" rushed out press releases predicting that "1999 will be remembered as the year with the greatest cumulative economic output in the history of the world," Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch suggested that he was about to disclose evidence showing that Microsoft is responsible for "all year 2000 problems and the resultant hysteria." In an E-mail message posted to an Internet investment chat group, Hatch stated that Microsoft should bear "most, if not all" financial responsibility for any year 2000 problems that occur "since the company helped to put computing power into the hands of tens of millions of people but didn't warn them until recently of the potential for year 2000 problems." Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter added his own twist, saying he has evidence showing that Microsoft's culpability "makes my Magic Bullet theory from the Kennedy assassination look like a thin gruel compared to the hearty conspiratorial stew I've begun to whip up over this."

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader called it "a great day for the American public" and promised that he would neither eat nor bungee jump until Microsoft "posted a bond of $1 trillion to cover all possible suboptimal outcomes of the transition from 1999 to 2000." Nader denied that freezing the financial assets of the American people will be seen as bothersome: "There are so many unsafe, unethical, and unhealthy products out there, it's actually a good thing for the government to step in and take away people's ability to hurt themselves by buying things." Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, threatened to shut down the government unless all computers worked perfectly by this Friday at noon, Georgia time. Gingrich scoffed at reminders that he's no longer in a position to shut down the government, saying he's already launched a petition drive on the Web that "has generated 200 million signatures in less than a week that gives me--unilaterally--the power to shut down the government."

Businesses reacted with a mixture of humor and weariness. "How would you like to be remembered as the president who made Windows 2000 obsolete even before Microsoft could introduce Windows 2002?" asked the CEO of a manufacturer of nuclear power plants, who asked that his name not be used in this article since he has personally contributed $1 million to the campaign of The Inventor of the Internet and those of George W. Bush and Ross Perot. But the CEO of an Internet startup lashed out at the plan, saying that his IPO's astronomical valuation "absolutely, positively demands that we lose 50% more money in 2000 than in 1999 or else our carefully crafted fortunes do the big flusharino--but how can we start losing that higher amount in 2000 if 2000 never starts?"

In one of the strangest twists of a very strange day, Hillary Clinton is believed to be drafting plans to call a news conference for tomorrow morning at which, we are told, she will announce that if she is elected to the Senate from New York, she will pull together a secret panel of 500 "date-variation experts" who will, she's believed to be willing to promise, come up with a plan that allows for the year 2000 itself and its attendant problem to be skipped by leaping right to 2001. "This is next-century thinking, no doubt about it," an aide said. But her likely opponent, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, seems to have one-upped his future rival by declaring that New York will begin counting years in reverse order, going from 1999 to 1998 to 1997 and so on. "This isn't a time for tricks and games, like skipping a whole year," said Giuliani. "This is a time for leadership, and sometimes in order to look forward, you have to turn backward to history to show the way."

In a final note on this story, word of Giuliani's plan sent Microsoft stock soaring as Wall Street analysts forecast that the city's retro strategy would cause sales of Windows 98 to shatter earlier marks; however, reports that the company is preparing to pump out 20 million new copies of Windows 95 could not be confirmed.

Bob Evans
Editor-in-Chief
bevans@cmp.com

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