US President Barack Obama praised US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for his performance on Monday, but did not say whether Bernanke would stay on at the end of his term next year.
“I think Ben Bernanke’s done an outstanding job,” Obama said in an interview on the Charlie Rose Show, a current affairs interview program broadcast on the PBS TV network.
“Ben Bernanke’s a little bit like Bob Muller, the head of the FBI, where he’s already stayed a lot longer than he wanted or he was supposed to,” he said.
However, when pressed to say whether he would reappoint Bernanke, a former Princeton University economics professor, as Fed chairman when his second four-year term expires on Jan. 31 next year, Obama — who would nominate the replacement — demurred.
“He has been an outstanding partner, along with the White House, in helping us recover much stronger than, for example, our European partners, from what could have been an economic crisis of epic proportions,” the president said.
After nearly eight years of shepherding the Fed and the economy through an economic crash and deep crisis in the financial system, and now straining to bring the economy back to life, Bernanke’s future has been a focus of great speculation.
Engaging and professorial, he has hinted that he would like to go back to Princeton and a quieter life.
However, with the Fed still stuck in a balancing act of supporting the economy with its huge easy-money program and watching for potential inflation threats that could come from that, many think Bernanke’s presence is still needed to calibrate policy and maintain continuity.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day