Stuart Varney Takes Imus By Surprise

Stuart Varney, the host of the new Fox Business Network show "Varney & Company," which will begin next week, sat down with Imus today and engaged in what some might call "TMI."

One of Varney's five favorite songs is Kenny Chesney's "She Thinks My Tractor's Still Sexy," because, Varney said, "I have a tractor. I have a wife, who thinks that I am sexy on my tractor."

Varney blamed the difficulty in distributing all sorts of necessary aid to people in Haiti on the total collapse of any authority there following Tuesday's cataclysmic earthquake.

"There wasn't much authority there before the earthquake, and there certainly isn't any now," said Varney. "In the absence of any kind of authority, any kind of discipline, and a total breakdown of all infrastructure, you have chaos."

He, like Imus, did not know how to guarantee that monetary donations would wind up in the best — and most responsible — hands.

"We're generous, we've got the money, we want to give it," said Varney, who sees a scandal emerging, not in how funds are directed but in how much money the world's major nations are contributing to the crisis.

The United States, for instance, has pledged $100 million. China, on the other hand, has committed just $1 million, or, as Imus observed, the same amount as Brad Pitt.

"I don't think they play on the world stage," Varney said about China. "They look inward, not outward. They've got this gigantic economy that bestrides the world with its exports, but they look in, they don't look out."

He is concerned that China could be "flat out lying," not about the size of its economy but about its growth rate, which China has claimed is as much as ten percent a year.

"There are some major investors who now say China is a bubble," said Varney. "They don't believe their statistics, they don't believe they are as big and successful and dynamic as they say they are, and they say they're heading for a fall."

Prince Alaweed bin Talal, the billionaire Saudi investor, told Neil Cavuto last night that he thinks China is everything they say they are. Varney demurred, saying he is inclined to believe China is exaggerating, and is in a rather dangerous position.

Imus took something decidedly less intelligent away from Alaweed's hit yesterday with Cavuto, and it had more to do with the Prince's television habits; apparently, he's a fan of news programs like "The O'Reilly Factor," "Huckabee," and "The Situation Room."

"He's a nice looking guy, the Prince, and he's a billionaire," said Imus, who wondered, "Where's the cocaine and the hookers? Where's the party?"

It's back in the 1980s, where you left it.

-Julie Kanfer