Amid all the dire warnings of lifts sticking, computers crashing and planes falling out of the sky, The Margin likes the attitude of investment bank Merrill Lynch to the year 2000 computer bug. It concludes in a survey running to 400 pages plus that most companies know it is coming and most will be ready, quoting Samuel Johnson in 1777 saying that "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully". There are 1 1/2 years left before the bug bites and, says Merills, "Microsoft, Latin America and Communism all changed in a lot less time".