Could company cash help college grads pay back loans?

Today’s college students have a lot to look forward to: They graduate. They get a job. They move out. And then, come December, they get a reminder — maybe by mail, maybe by email — that their first student loan payments are due.　As if they need reminding.　The average student graduates with $28,950 in student loan debt, according to the nonprofit research organization Institute for College Access and Success. That means each month, on top of rent or mortgage, insurance and car payments, the avera

Dec. 25, 2016

[Robert B. Reich] Why President Trump will continue to hold rallies

Donald Trump has just finished the last of his nine post-election “thank-you tour” rallies. Why did he do them? And why is he planning further rallies after he becomes president?　One clue is that Trump conducted them only in the states he won. And most attendees appeared to have voted for him -- overwhelmingly white, and many wearing Trump hats and T-shirts. When warmup speakers asked how many had previously attended a Trump rally, most hands went up.　A second clue is that rather than urge follo

Dec. 25, 2016

[Abdulfattah Alkhaled] Does Obama feel any shame at all?

The United States representative to the United Nations, Samantha Power, gave an impassioned speech last week asking Russian and Syrian representatives whether they felt “any shame at all” for their actions in Aleppo, and whether there is “no execution of a child that gets under (their) skin?” For Syrians, these statements were infuriating. Americans should be asked the same questions. You, too, have blood on your hands.　Over the last few years, you have deceived us with your empty promises. From

Dec. 25, 2016

[Adam Minter] Why China and Hollywood don’t mix

For movie moguls, it probably seemed like an irresistible idea: Pair a Hollywood star with China’s most famous director, add a preposterous story about monsters attacking the most recognizable Chinese landmark, and mix in $150 million to make the magic happen. The result was “The Great Wall,” the most expensive Hollywood-Chinese collaboration ever -- and a colossal cultural flop.　　Despite financial backing from China’s largest cinema operator, possibly the biggest marketing campaign in the count

Dec. 23, 2016

[Andrew Sheng] Time to take risks in 2017 to overcome headwinds against growth in Asia

A century ago, the 1917 Russian Revolution marked the end of the First World War that changed the 20th century into a new divide between different ideologies.Twenty years ago, the Asian financial crisis erupted in 1997, followed ten years later with the global financial crisis (more accurately the North Atlantic financial crisis).Will 2017 mark the outbreak of another severe financial crisis, particularly in the emerging markets?The common thread linking all four events is the US dollar.In 1917,

Dec. 22, 2016

[Narain D Batra] India tries a moonshot

Digital India has been called a moonshot project that draws together the best human and private-public capital to achieve a goal that was previously thought to be impossible: Total transformation of society.Digital India, based on Aadhaar, focuses on three fundamental areas -- access to digital infrastructure as a utility, services on demand, and digital empowerment of citizens through access to information. With more than a billion UIDs and growing, Aadhaar is the world’s largest database.It ha

Dec. 22, 2016

Suu Kyi has to rein in the violence

The Myanmar government and Association of Southeast Asian Nations are struggling to find adequate solutions to the Rohingya crisis, but mere diplomacy is unlikely to help the benighted Muslim population concentrated in northeastern Rakhine state.The United Nations’ Human Rights Office claims to be receiving daily reports of rapes, murders and other horrors. Zeid Raad al-Hussein, its point man on rights, has condemned Nay Pyi Taw’s approach to the crisis as “counterproductive, even callous.”Top A

Dec. 22, 2016

[David Ignatius] Trump illustrates the uses -- and dangers -- of ambiguity in foreign policy

Most presidents wait until inauguration before sparking their first foreign policy crises. Donald Trump has a month to go and he has already wandered into two -- one with China and one with Russia.How will these foreign challenges shape Trump‘s early months in office? His freewheeling style seems to have discombobulated China, which has some unexpected benefits. But on Russia, Trump is on his back foot. He proposes befriending a nation that, according to an Oct. 7 statement by US intelligence ag

Dec. 22, 2016

[Rachel Marsden] Murder of Russian ambassador underscores Turkey‘s capriciousness

An off-duty Turkish police officer gunned down Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, Monday at a photo exhibit on Ankara‘s John F. Kennedy Street, just across from the US Embassy. The assailant, a member of the riot police, positioned himself right behind the ambassador, fired several shots at close range, and then ranted about Russia’s involvement in the anti-jihadist operation in Syria.This incident is symbolic of the chaos that plagues Turkey and permeates its foreign policy. Is Turke

Dec. 22, 2016

[Mark Whitehouse] How Trump has changed the financial outlook for 2017

US President-elect Donald Trump has given the world ample reason for concern about what the new year might look like. So far, though, financial markets appear to be assuming that everything will be awesome.Pretty much everywhere you look -- stocks, interest rates, credit derivatives -- markets see a rosier picture for 2017 than they did in early November. While much has happened since then, Trump‘s election was by far the biggest surprise, suggesting that it’s a major driver of the shift.Conside

Dec. 21, 2016

[Kim Myong-sik] Politics, law and Constitutional Court

Fifteen Bukchon-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul is the address of the Constitutional Court. The courthouse building with a facade of while pillars is located diagonally across from Jaedong Elementary School, which I attended a long time ago. My old house that was destroyed during the war was only about 100 meters away.Childhood memories are brought back whenever I stroll along the street from the Jaedong Intersection to Samcheong Park passing by the courthouse. This Bukchon-ro and two narrow roads running

Dec. 21, 2016

[Leonid Bershidsky] Why artificial intelligence won‘t displace human artists

This year’s news about what artificial intelligence can do in the arts has been both exciting and scary. Neural networks have learned to paint like masters and compose sophisticated music. Those of us in creative endeavors might be as endangered by technological advances as blue-collar workers are often said to be -- though we are protected by certain limitations that technology is never likely to overcome.　Last summer, a team of Russian developers released Prisma, a mobile app based on the work

Dec. 21, 2016

[Salim Furth] The cost of ‘permission slip’ government

What does it mean to be middle-class in America today? Although there are exceptions, a middle-class lifestyle in the US today typically involves holding a full-time job, having a car and earning enough to eventually buy a house.Income and consumption are up, thanks to economic growth over the past generation. So why do so many Americans feel that those middle-class milestones are becoming harder to achieve?One reason for the disconnect between data and perception is that there’s more prejudicia

Dec. 21, 2016

[Kim Hoo-ran] A year of the surreal

It has been a surreal year. Unexpected, unsuspected events and developments sprung up around the world. Foreboding helplessness overwhelms us as we wake up to news that could potentially change our way of life.We wonder if things that are happening around us are real, as they are so unforeseen and seemingly beyond rational explanation. We wonder with dark fear if perhaps this is the new reality -- principles and ideals that we hold to be universal and absolute now being questioned, shaken up.A s

Dec. 21, 2016

[Peter Singer] The empathy trap

Soon after Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, he told a young girl, “We don’t have enough empathy in our world today, and it is up to your generation to change that.” Obama expressed a widespread view, so the title of a new book, “Against Empathy,” by Yale University psychologist Paul Bloom, comes as a shock. How can anyone be against something that enables us to put ourselves in others’ shoes and feel what they feel?To answer that question, we might ask another: For whom s

Dec. 20, 2016

Cheer up, emerging markets, it’s not about the Fed

Cheer up, emerging-market investors, Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen is about to step up the pace of rate increases! It’s hard to be upbeat when your portfolio is melting, but it really may not be that bad. The first thing to keep in mind is that US interest rates will not in isolation determine returns on emerging market assets this year -- the dollar will. A regression of monthly data going back 15 years using the currency and stock and bond returns shows that 79 percent of the MSCI B

Dec. 20, 2016

Appraising Trump’s pick for secretary of state

Robert Gates served as defense secretary under George W. Bush, a Republican, and then Barack Obama, a Democrat, which qualifies him as an honest broker and independent thinker. How honest? He wrote in September that Donald Trump is “beyond repair” on national security, “stubbornly uninformed about the world” and “unfit to be commander-in-chief.”Makes you wonder if Gates would have any advice for Trump-the-unrepairable on how to duct tape together a worldview, and if Trump would even listen. Turn

Dec. 20, 2016