JANE BRYANT QUINN

Is this an asteroid or what? Will it crash into the planet or burn out before impact? No, not President Clinton’s Monica story but the other favorite focus of incendiary gossip: the Millennium Bug.

As anyone not in deep purdah knows, many computers don’t recognize the 21st century. They read “January 1, 2000” as “January 1, 1900,” because their original programmers didn’t arrange for “19” to roll into “20.”

That little mistake often shorthanded as Y2K (year 2000) could cause anything from minor mischief to big trouble when the millennium turns. Some computers will stop. Some will give answers that are wrong.

We know that every system won’t be repaired on time. What we don’t know is how much that’s going to matter.

Businesses, consumers, government agencies, hospitals, high-rise buildings, public utilities all are vulnerable. In the best case, data jam-ups will be only a nuisance. In the worst case, serial, crashing computers will damage commerce so badly that companies lay off tens of thousands of workers and a recession ensues.

Investors contemplating the risks ask: Should I sell my stocks? Is the Y2K risk, on top of the market slide we’ve already had, going to be the final straw?

How you answer that question depends on how hard you think the Bug might bite.

Longtime Y2K agitator Edward Yardeni, chief economist for Deutsche Bank Securities in New York, puts the odds of a global recession at 70 percent. The pace of repairs is too slow, he says, and there are too few contingency plans.

For the muddle-through view, there’s PaineWebber’s chief investment strategist, Edward Kerschner. He sees glitches, disruptions, losses at some firms and a few small-company failures but no recession.

In fact, he expects a Y2K dividend. Many corporations are buying new and more efficient computer systems, Kerschner says, which boosts growth in the short term and productivity, long term.

At the Gartner Group in Stamford, Conn., a top technology consultant, the assessment is more hopeful than not. Gartner surveys a representative group of companies and government agencies in 87 countries every three months. Research Director Lou Marcoccio thinks that 30 percent to 50 percent will have at least one critical failure, meaning that an important system will shut down.

But before you panic, hear what else Marcoccio says: 90 percent of those failures will last less than three days, “so they won’t stop the world from turning.”

There’s no precedent for Y2K. Whether to truck with the Pollyannas or the Cassandras may be a matter of temperament. But at least we know that brief jolts to business don’t have to turn into something worse.

Companies have managed their way through paralyzing, week-long storms, power blackouts, transportation halts, telephone shutdowns and foreign economic alarms. During the three-week government shutdown in December 1995, federal spending collapsed yet the economy grew at a decent annual rate of 2.2 percent.

Many businesses already operate in the 21st century making loans, writing leases, taking orders. As the months advance, more and more systems will reach into real, ’00 time, forcing companies to adjust. Problems addressed now mean fewer millennial risks.

Nevertheless, there are dangerous holes in our understanding. By next spring, we’ll know more about the problem, as systems are tested and reports made public. My guess: we’ll get through it, but stay tuned.

Pru runaround

What’s happening to the policyholders who were cheated by the Prudential Insurance Co. of America? Not enough, some of them say. They think they’re getting a runaround.

In 1996, Prudential confessed to bilking unknown numbers of customers. The company agreed to $60 million in fines and has set aside $2 billion for restitution. Policyholders were eligible for some sort of offer if they bought cash-value insurance from Pru any time from 1982 through 1995.

Rene Schreiner, a book editor in Prospect Heights, Ill., started complaining about her Pru policy almost from the day she bought it in 1988.

An agent had persuaded her to replace two older policies with a newer one, she says. When she got the policy, however, she discovered that it contained much less cash value than the old ones did. (The agent had led her to believe there would be no loss.) Also, the cash in the new policy wasn’t invested in stocks, as she’d asked.

She complained but got nowhere. Her agent had left. New agents wanted only to sell her new insurance. In May 1997, she got a notice about the Pru settlement. In August, she filed a claim.

Pru offers a form of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) for people who were wronged. You might get part of your money or your old policy back.

When filing her claim, Schreiner followed the form Pru sent her checking off the boxes that defined how she’d been misled and telling her story in writing, in more detail. Over the following year, Pru sent her occasional letters, saying that it was working on her case.

“Then I got a letter I can’t even read without getting angry,” Schreiner told my associate, Kate O’Brien Ahlers. It came in June 1998, and said that Pru was “unable to determine the nature of the complaint you would like us to address.”

She had 30 days to “bring additional facts … to our attention.” If she didn’t respond in time, Pru said, her case could be closed. Mystified, she called Pru’s customer hot line to ask what additional facts were needed.

The customer representative had no idea. She told Schreiner simply to restate her claim in different words.

Pru spokesman Robert DeFillippo says this letter went to 60,000 people “who sent in claims that had not stated in what ways they were misled.” He says the letter was meant to give them a second chance. “We’ve had no complaints,” he said.

Oops. He changed his tune when I faxed him a copy of Schreiner’s claims. After a review, Pru concluded that she had, indeed, stated how she was misled.

Syndicated columnist Jane Bryant Quinn can be reached in care of the Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St., Washington D.C. 20071-9200.