VCRs and Japan have a long way to go

I almost felt sorry for Bill Gates last week. Almost, but didn't, because Bill Gates isn't exactly the sort of man you can really feel sorry for. I could certainly feel sorry for whoever set up the newest Windows display that did what so many Windows applications do under pressure crash but my sympathies for Bill were somewhat fleeting.

I'm not really a PC fan. You see, I'm a Mac user, and Mac users are the vegetarians of the computer world. Mac users want computers to be simple to use, so that everyone can simply call a file whatever they like and not worry about things like dot doc or doc xls or all the bits and bobs that seem to come along with PC files.

However, in the world of business, despite the irritating qualities that all PC applications possess, Windows is the preferred option of most people simply because it's all pervasive. So by day I use a PC but by night. . . it's Apples all the way.

Just as well there's one piece of technological equipment I can use at home, because the last few days have been something of an electronic nightmare for me. Given that we're falling over every conceivable bit of technology in the office, you'd think I'd be pretty OK with that wellknown test of technological competence the video recorder! Our old video (weighing in somewhere around the Mike Tyson level) and probably the same age, digested its final tape and spat out the chewed contents last week. It has had a habit of reducing video tapes to shreds of their former selves which is almost OK if it's your own tape, but not great if it's rented. So I decided that a new machine was in order.

I listened to the patter about four heads and Nicam stereo and scart cables, nodded wisely and picked the least offensive looking recorder. I read the instructions (ably translated from the original Japanese!) and went ahead. Of course, if I'd bothered to read the manual properly or if I'd asked my 10year-old nephew to do it for me, then everything would have been OK. As it is, after about three hours wrestling with the controls, it still thinks BBC1 is RTE. It also thinks RTE is RTE. I haven't yet discovered if there's a way of fooling it. Unfortunately, the manual is of no assistance whatsoever because it warned me about pressing buttons in a haphazard and foolish manner. But did I listen? No, because as an Apple user I'm used to pressing whatever buttons I like and it making no difference whatsoever to the task in hand.

And I won't bore you with the details of how long it took me to programme a list of names into the mobile phone that I've bought. (I know I'm rabidly antimobile phone, but it's become almost necessary to have it, and I promise that if anybody sees me walking down the street talking into the damn thing I'll immediately apply for a job in the European Central Bank.)

Although getting a job in the ECB seems to be fraught right now. With the great European summit on deciding the founder members taking place this weekend, the entire proceedings have been continually thrown into disarray by President Chirac of France wanting Jean-Claude Trichet to land the top job, whereas Wim Duisenberg is the preferred candidate of almost everyone else.

Apparently if Duisenberg agrees to take a shorter term than the full eight years the French might be willing to compromise. An eight-year contract! I'd say there are a lot of people in the real world that wouldn't mind a contract spanning that length of time.

A throng of my old Central Bank colleagues have blithely headed off to Frankfurt and the ECB, not caring whether Trichet or Duisenberg gets the job.

So if there isn't a Rosie O'Grady's or Scruffy Murphy's in Frankfurt yet, I expect there will be quite soon.

The markets haven't been taking the run up to the weekend all that well. On Monday there were sharp falls in both bonds and equities, although much of the nervousness is emanating from the States, where the economy continues to jog merrily ahead.

Alan Greenspan, Fed Chairman, seems to be coming under increasing pressure from other Fed board members to hike rates in the US, but hasn't been in a rush to do so given that inflation remains subdued. The likelihood is that he still wants to assess the impact of Japan's latest economic stimulus package. (There are so many of them coming out of Japan these days that you tend to lose count.)

I see the Japanese economy as a Sumo wrestler lots of impact on the surrounding area, but difficult to turn around in a hurry.

Speaking of Sumo wrestlers I was sorry that I was unable to make it to the IFSC/Harbourmaster games night for People in Need. Well, I regret not being able to go and watch people pretend to be Sumo wrestlers or human table football participants (!) or any of the other variety of humiliations that were, apparently, available on the night, but I don't regret missing out on being humiliated myself.

On Sunday night, I stayed in and watched The Moneychangers on TV. This gave a wonderful insight into the machinations of political and economic leaders back in the days of 1991/92 when EMU looked as though it were dead in the water and Norman Lamont pushed up interest rates to 15 per cent before deciding enough was enough and hauling sterling out of the ERM.

It was absolutely wonderful to hear the personal views of people who were really just Reuters or Bloomberg headlines back then you see names like Sapin, Waigel and Tietmeyer so often, but you rarely see the person.

And if there was anyone in the last week I did feel some sympathy for, it was the erstwhile German Finance Minister, Theo Waigel, who confessed to feeling "hurt" when he assumed that a comment about "German technocrats" referred to him.

It's nice to know that Finance Ministers, even German Finance Ministers, have feelings too.

Sheila O'Flanagan is a fixed-income specialist at NCB Stockbrokers