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Quebec's Liberal government has announced a $620 million aid package for the province's bruised manufacturing sector. The measures, to be rolled out over the next five years, will help Quebec companies and businesses adjust to the Canadian dollar's unprecedented gains. Some $256 million of the money announced Friday in Montreal is new funding. The rest was previously included in Quebec's May 2007 budget. Premier Jean Charest said the measures will help companies adapt to the rapid rise in the Canadian dollar. "That the dollar rises so quickly is brutal for the Quebec economy," he said. The upside has been lower...

BEIJING -- The 22-year-old was a freelance prostitute. Henna-haired, eyebrows painted and dressed no differently than a college student, she moved from beauty salon to beauty salon, taking calls on her mobile phone from salon managers when they couldn't find enough girls for all their customers. She said she wasn't as well paid as call girls in some of Beijing's toniest hotels. Nor was she as poor as the women on construction sites, who sometimes service scores of migrant workers a night for barely more than $1 per customer. Two years ago, when she worked in her native Shandong province,...

The Canadian dollar surged to a 13 1/2-year high Monday - gaining almost a full U.S. cent - as a sharp increase in crude oil prices fired up gains against the U.S. greenback. The loonie was trading during the day as high as 85.74 cents US, up 0.9 of a cent from Friday's close of 84.84 cents U.S. It later closed at 85.57 cents US, up 0.73 cent,. "This is the highest we've been since the month of January 1992," said George Davis, chief foreign exchange technical analyst with RBC Capital Markets. "The market is starting to refocus on...

HOW GOOD IS THE DOLLAR?Feb 11, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.comby staff reportsAt the recent International Center for Economic Growth (ICEG) annual get together in Davos, Switzerland, speakers from various countries commented on global warming, politics, economics and foreign currency relationships. Bill Bonner of the Daily Reckoning notes Fan Gan, a mid-level government official from China had some stark opinions about his government’s lost faith in the dollar. Fan remarked. "The U.S. dollar is no longer (seen) as a stable currency.” He sees his country moving away from having so much of its holdings in dollars. Bonner remarks, “As to why China...

<p>The Bank of Japan unexpectedly decided to add more cash to the economy as Governor Toshihiko Fukui said he shared investors' concern about a ``possible crisis'' after the Nikkei 225 Stock Average fell to a 20-year low.</p> <p>The bank raised its target for reserves it makes available to lenders to as much as 27 trillion yen ($226 billion) from a maximum of 22 trillion yen. The bank kept monthly government bond purchases unchanged at 1.2 trillion yen and didn't say how it planned to increase the supply of money for banks.</p>