January 3, 2000
Web posted at: 2:40 a.m. EST (0740 GMT)

In this story: Small businesses seen as wild card 'The fizzle was good' RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

(CNN) -- With Y2K computer fears receding around the globe Monday, U.S. businesses prepared to reopen after the holidays with fingers crossed.

President Clinton's top Y2K adviser, John Koskinen, called Monday "an important and significant day" for ensuring some of the most important business computers will work.

"We expect there will continue to be small glitches," he said Sunday.

Four of Wall Street's biggest brokerages -- Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Prudential and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter -- said Sunday they had detected no internal problems related to Y2K and all four planned to conduct business as usual Monday.

Asia made a bullish entrance into the first day of 2000 stock trading, with the Hong Kong and Singapore stock markets setting records after opening on Monday and none reporting a hint of the feared Y2K bug.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange -- one of the first major Western markets to open in 2000 -- also showed no Y2K-related problems in early futures trading Sunday.

"We haven't heard anything about problems at financial markets either in the United States or overseas," said Margaret Draper, spokeswoman for the Securities Industry Association.

The biggest uncertainty in the United States focused on hundreds of thousands of small businesses that planned to reopen Monday, yet took no precautions to vaccinate their computers against the Y2K bug.

Americans looked overseas Sunday for hints of Y2K trouble in the world's earlier time zones, where employees returning to offices for the work week began turning on computers and other systems for the first time in 2000.

The State Department said there were no problems by early afternoon in New Zealand, among the first countries worldwide to experience Monday morning. By early evening, the White House Y2K command center had no other reports of serious trouble elsewhere, either.

Top experts, admittedly surprised at computers' seamless transition to 2000, cautioned nevertheless that countries and organizations that got a late start on repairs -- even in the United States -- aren't out of the woods yet.

"Some of the procrastinators haven't been heard from," Koskinen said. "I think it will be another few days before we can see definitively."

A smattering of glitches blamed on Y2K came to light. A customer returning a movie to Super Video rental in suburban Albany, New York, was presented with a $91,250 late fee after computers showed the tape was 100 years late. Employees at a different video rental store in Florida used pen and paper because computers failed.

Top federal officials Sunday responded to criticism that too much money -- an estimated $100 billion in the United States alone -- and attention was paid to the Y2K problem.

"If they didn't fix the systems, they would not be functioning," Koskinen said Sunday. "Somebody said we did it too well, we made it look too easy. Maybe that's right. Maybe we should have had a control group over here failing."

On CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson declared, "This was worth it."

"In this case, the fizzle was good," Richardson said. "The fact the fire department didn't have to put out any fires this weekend doesn't mean we shouldn't have a fire department."

With so few reports of trouble, Y2K centers scaled back staffs. Officials at the federal government's $50 million command center considered ending 24-hour operations as early as Tuesday; they had planned to work round-the-clock through Friday.

The first baby born in 2000 on U.S. territory was delivered in Guam. The infant, weighing 7 pounds, 7 ounces, was named Pete John G. Urdanetta San Nicholas.

"That will actually look fairly interesting on a T-shirt," Koskinen said.

Correspondent CNN's Peter Viles and Reuters contributed to this report.

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