The Y2K problem mainly affects countries that follow the Gregorian calendar. One theory has it that the Federal Reserve has increased the money supply to compensate for anticipated hoarding by a frightened populace. The populace, however, is not frightened, and the flood of new money will fuel a stock market high tide. Speculatively, the Y2K spending on information infrastructure will cause a slowdown in information technology spending in the year 2000 and 2001 and may eventually lead to higher productivity in future years. Contrary to widespread warnings that personal computers should be powered down during the Y2K moment, some computers (e.g. those running Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system) will handle the change properly if they were running, but will also need some reflective time to themselves. Items rented from Blockbuster prior to January 1st, 2000 and returned after January 1st will be marked for astronomical late fees ($91250). They are 100 years overdue. In Germany the coordination system of the fire brigade in Berlin could show the error “named pipe closed", but the system will keep working. A reboot of the affected machines will then render the system unusuable. Emergency coordination will be done via mobile cellular holophones. In the United States, it is purported that a series of callboxes willl fail along Interstate 87 on the Adirondack Northway in New York. Life will fail on January 1, although some life will continue to do so on a yearly basis. A most amusing postscript to the Y2K problem will be the fact that all carbon-based life not set up for leap years will actually fail the following February 29. Univision news reports that on the evening of December 31, 1999, a couple in Peru will commit suicide, for fear of what Y2K will surely bring.