Sunday

CNN 20: Y2K Fears, December 31, 1999

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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RICK LOCKRIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: When we started doing Y2K stories back in 1998, we did stories on grocery stores and trucking industries and satellites and nuclear weapons and hospitals and government and ATM and credit cards and everything that could have conceivably been effected by Y2K.

ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: People were worried about heat, food, shelter, clothing. I think they were preparing for the worst. They collected water in their house, food. They got lanterns, they got extra heating systems that would work in case the electricity went out. And they took money out of the bank. And on the other side, industry did the same thing. They revamped systems, computer systems actually got a face lift kind of thing, they got better.

I think a lot of people didn't know what was going to happen when the year 2000 was going to came around, that has prompted a lot of money being spent, a trillion dollars was spent worldwide. So I think the fear caused a lot of people to spend lots of money.

LOCKRIDGE: That's an awful lot of money to spend, but I think, now, looking back, what if we hadn't done enough? It's easy now to look back and say there wasn't any crisis, but if the world had not spent that trillion dollars to be ready, we could still be talking about Y2K right now.

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