News

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

BEN THE TOOL MAN

“The economy continues to require the support of accommodative monetary policies. However, we have been working to ensure that we have the tools to reverse, at the appropriate time, the currently very high degree of monetary stimulus.”

– Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke unveils his ample – if largely untested – toolbox for dismantling the Fed's jumble of emergency liquidity provisions.

GETTING OUT OF DODGE

“I sleep better at night.”

– Former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge tells Business News Network what it's like to be watching the global economic and financial recovery as a private citizen, rather than as a central bank boss.

International investment adviser Marc Faber is author of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.

DOCTOR DOOM'S CHINA PROGNOSIS

“The [Chinese] economy, for sure, will slow down meaningfully this year. Will it crash, that is the big question.”

– Investing legend and famed doomsayer Marc Faber warns that China – predicted by many to be the engine for the 2010 global economic recovery – could instead backfire badly due to overcapacity problems and slowing loan growth.

STUART SMALLEY, DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE

“I flat-out don't trust Comcast and NBC to operate in the best interest of consumers.”

– U.S. Senator (and former Saturday Night Live comedian/writer) Al Franken, citing his decades of experience working at NBC, expresses his opposition to cable operator Comcast Corp.'s proposed acquisition of a controlling stake in his former employer.

CAVEAT EMPTOR VALENTINUS

“The briefs mean that no man ever needs to feel inadequate again on the most passionate day of the social calendar. However, we can't be held responsible for what happens once the pants come off.”

– British retailer Debenhams has seen online sales of its male-anatomy-boosting underwear – sort of a men's below-the-belt Wonderbra – surge 76 per cent in the Valentine's Day run-up, but a spokesman cautions about the danger of anticlimactic results once the deception is removed.