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Credit and swap spreads have already risen in anticipation of the world's financial markets clamming shut this December. Borrowers and bankers talk nervously about the disappearance of liquidity and short-term funding in the run-up to year 2000. Central banks are on standby. So are some traders who hope to take advantage of illiquidity and mispricing. The frustration for many is that it is their own contingency plans, not their computers, that threaten chaos. But no-one knows how fierce the full millennium effect will be. Marcus Walker reports

The 17 superchefs of the European Central Bank who sit on its governing council have 17 ideas about how to set rates, and how transparent the process should be. From the orthodox toughness of Duisenberg and Issing to the softness on the Nordic and southern fringes. Here are the two Germans, two Frenchmen, two Dutchmen, two Finns, two Spaniards, two Italians, the Austrian, Irishman, Portuguese, Belgian and Luxembourgois who rule euroland. By David Lanchner

Life after the crisis: Asia moves on

The Asian crisis delivered a devastating blow to the region's sprawling conglomerates. For years they diversified and grew rapidly, feeding on a rich diet of debt, much of it in foreign currencies. Then suddenly their markets collapsed and their debt service costs soared. But the bad times are ending and after drastic restructuring the best companies are on the move again. Alex Mathias reports.

Plummeting oil prices, turmoil in world markets and natural disasters: José Angel Gurría's first months as Mexico's finance secretary were a baptism of fire. But his legendary powers of persuasion enabled him to make vital budget cuts to keep Mexico on track. By Brian Caplen

Revamping the US equities market

There can be no stronger sign of progress in Russian financial structuring than the news of the revival of Inkombank, one of the institutions worst hit in the crisis.

John Reed's pronouncements that Citibank and Travelers Group are not merging fast enough may be too severe. The banking group's merged corporate and investment banking divisions are trying their best to show otherwise.

Hyperinflation, a stalled privatization process, a lack of raw materials and a national currency near-impossible to convert have understandably encouraged the view among foreign investors that Belarus is an economic basket-case. But, as Theodore Kim reports, for the adventurous it's one of the cheapest places in the world to do business and it does have an industrial infrastructure so massive that it earned a reputation as the assembly plant of the Soviet Union

Roar of the Celtic euro-tiger

Bankers tossed out of jobs in last year's emerging markets crisis should now be brushing off their CVs. Quietly and cautiously banks are rebuilding their emerging markets teams - primarily in Asian and Latin American equities - in the hope that this year's momentum in the asset class will be sustained. ING Barings which was heavily criticized for radically downsizing a tip-top team is leading the way back.

Nothing surprises crisis-hardened Desmond Supple any more, but even he was left slightly baffled by Malaysia's bid to resurrect talk of a single south-east Asian currency. Supple, head of research at Barclays Capital in Singapore, deftly reeled off reasons why, in his opinion, such a concept would not work, at least for the foreseeable future. Variations in development levels between the countries and differences in business cycles are top of Supple's list.