Financial quotes of the month

Lebanon’s Transportation and Public Works Minister Ghazi Aridi after the Cabinet extended Middle East Airlines’ exclusivity deal for another 12 years:“We did not extend exclusivity to a normal company, but we extended it for a company of endless successes” “We’re the definition of an idiot by Einstein – repeating the same experiment [and expecting different results]. That’s what central banks have reduced themselves to. We’ll never know what will happen if they stop because they continue to print, print and print.” Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank “In the mobile telecom sector you need to anticipate growth and expand before the demand picks up. In Lebanon it has been quite the opposite.” Claude Bassil, chief executive of Lebanon’s mobile operator Touch “An award of $104 million is obviously a great deal of money, but billions of dollars in taxes owed will be collected that otherwise would not have been