US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said that banks will be the safest place for people to stash their cash at the end of the year, despite worries that a computer bug could cause problems for financial systems around the globe.

"I think you will have a far greater chance of losing your money if you take it out than if you leave it in," Greenspan told the US Senate Banking Committee last week. He implied that the risk of deposits being electronically wiped out by a computer glitch is less than the danger of being robbed of money withdrawn because of such fears.

"The most risky activity that people can take is to take all the currency out of their banks" because that will only spawn a new industry - "millennium thievery", Mr Greenspan said.

He also said people's worries about potential millennium computer problems are far greater than the likelihood of the problems occurring. "I see that the concerns that a lot of people have about what is going to happen to their banks . . . (are) far more adverse than (what) I think even remotely is going to be the case," he said.

However, a US consumer magazine has warned readers that it would be "prudent . . . to withdraw - and safely store - about two weeks' worth of cash, or to stock up on travellers' cheques, a few weeks before December 31st." But Fed and other US bank officials say there should be no need for anyone to do that.