General Electric Quarterly Profits Up

General Electric Co. delivered some good news Friday to investors who worried about a slowing economy, saying its quarterly profit rose 4 percent and reaffirming its outlook for 2008. The conglomerate's big ticket business - jet engines, railroad locomotives, and water treatment plants, powered GE's profit, posting $3.4 billion, or 26 percent more than the fourth quarter of 2006. It also gave GE a global reach that should help blunt the impact of a possible U.S. recession.