>OTHERS TO WATCH

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, will continue to play the central role in a resolution of Europe’s debt crisis that could come as early as this year. With a renewed electoral mandate at home, Merkel can somewhat relax bailout terms for countries struck by budget crises without stirring up resentment at home. But as Bank of England governor Mark Carney recently warned, little progress on the crisis is to be expected until the European Central Bank completes the task of helping Europe’s leading banks clear out their plethora of bad debts.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com Inc., is vying with Google Inc. to be the company that ate the Internet. The erstwhile bookseller, relentless in finding new things to peddle online, is now going head-to-head with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and traditional supermarkets in the fresh produce business. How to speedily get perishable bananas and tomatoes to people’s homes? Why, with drones, of course. Amazon PrimeAir, not to be confused with Amazon Prime, Bezos’ streaming-video competitor to Netflix, aims within five years to make half-hour deliveries by drone from its warehouses to your doorstep, for about 86 per cent of the goods the world’s biggest online retailer stocks.

Stephen Poloz, new governor of the Bank of Canada, will likely be denied his desire to have the Bank finally start raising interest rates to keep inflation in check — reversing gears after cheap-money policy began on the eve of the Great Recession. Economic growth in Canada hasn’t picked up sufficiently to justify a rate cut. GDP revival in the U.S. remains anemic. And the European debt crisis (as noted above) could go either way — poised for resolution, finally, or a worsening nightmare if Euro banks can’t find a way to offload crippling bad loans. In company with Germany, Japan, South Korea and Australia, Canada’s export-reliant economy needs a sustained recovery in Europe to be assured of prosperity at home.