Economists were probably too busy watching markets gyrate to contemplate last month’s big news in science. Physicists detected particles travelling faster than light, which, if the reading was accurate, means time travel is possible. Now, let’s play a quick mind experiment that would surely captivate the deans of the dismal science: Pretend you have just been transported 10 years into the future to see how this incipient global crisis pans out. It would be hard to find anyone who isn’t desperate

Viewpoints Oct. 26, 2011

Vice presidents are a vestigial limb of politics. The position persists even though a vice presidential candidate rarely carries a state, leads a constituency or even commands a portfolio beyond whatever he negotiates ad hoc with the principal. Research suggests that veep candidates don’t bring many votes to a presidential ticket, although an especially bad one can do damage at the margins (see Sarah Palin) or worse (Thomas Eagleton). Once in office, a few vice presidents have been notably troub

Viewpoints Oct. 26, 2011

As real-life bad guys go, it doesn’t get much worse than Joseph Kony. He’s the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a cultish militia in central Africa that survives by plundering villages, massacring adults and forcing boys to become soldiers and girls to become sex slaves. President Barack Obama has ordered the deployment of 100 military advisers to Uganda to help regional militaries capture or kill Kony and his commanders. It’s a modest and reasonable plan, and a good idea. The LRA, which pr

Viewpoints Oct. 26, 2011

What a glorious week for the world.Free and fair elections in Tunisia, Muammar el-Gadhafi’s demise. All the fomentation and death brought by the Arab Spring have produced two new states that stand as shining examples ― not just for the still-struggling people of Syria and Yemen, but also for China, Belarus, Cambodia, Zimbabwe and countless other unyielding authoritarian states.“You have won your revolution,” President Obama proclaimed with a big smile just after Gadhafi’s death. And on Sunday ne

Viewpoints Oct. 26, 2011

When Seoul citizens go to the polls today, their minds will be more focused on which way the Republic of Korea should be directed rather than what the capital city administration should do.Both candidates Na Kyung-won from the conservative ruling Grand National Party and Park Won-soon supported by a coalition of opposition parties and liberal civic groups had jurist careers and no experience in municipal administration. They debated over some welfare and city development policies, but their two

Editorial Oct. 25, 2011

By all accounts, 99 percent of the North Korean people are not aware of what happened in Libya last week, let alone the violent pro-democracy movements in other Middle East and North African nations since last spring. The other 1 percent are the top-level party and administration officials and businesspeople who travel to China and other parts of the world. Agencies monitoring the North’s print and broadcast media reported that they have been completely silent about the death of Moammar Gadhafi

Editorial Oct. 25, 2011

The Obama administration says the Dodd-Frank financial reform law ends “too big to fail,” meaning that no financial institution will ever again need to be bailed out. The promise is alluring, but it’s already proving to be false. The argument rests on the premise that bank capital is now high enough to withstand serious shocks, so a calamity is less likely. It also assumes that Dodd-Frank’s new resolution authority allows global financial institutions to be wound down in an orderly fashion, and

Viewpoints Oct. 25, 2011

The anti-Wall Street movement has confounded Republicans, Democrats and analysts alike. The take on the right is that Occupy Wall Street is the same old riff-raff of leftist anarchists, unlike the grassroots conservative Tea Party; seen from the left, it’s an authentic uprising against the huge income disparity in America and a call for redistributing the wealth. Actually, it is part of a combustible global protest that goes beyond the professional rabble rousers. There is a focus on income ineq

Viewpoints Oct. 25, 2011

Being a geopolitical analyst and forecaster often means having to explain to people in America how and why a single event in Africa, Russia or China will directly impact them. One such event is the French presidential election set for May 2012, for which the opposition Socialists have just selected their candidate, Francois Hollande, in a final round of open primary voting.For most people, the knee-jerk reaction to an event on the other side of the world is, “Why should I give a toss what happen

Viewpoints Oct. 25, 2011

The new Japanese government is showing a subtle change in approach to its responsibility for the “comfort women” during World War II ― one of the most troubling issues between Japan and South Korea. If Tokyo has any sincerity, they should first consider the short time left to resolve the problem. The issue must be settled before all the victims pass away. New debates started in Tokyo over remarks by Seiji Maehara, a former foreign minister and present chairman of the ruling Democratic Party of J

Editorial Oct. 24, 2011

As U.S. and North Korean envoys began talks in Geneva on Monday to resume the six-party talks in Beijing, many Koreans recalled the bilateral accord signed by the two countries 17 years ago in the same Swiss city to halt North Korea’s then-nascent nuclear program. The 1994 “Agreed Framework,” which had a title chosen to evade the Senate ratification procedure in the U.S. and was thus legally non-binding, was a product of extraordinary circumstances on the Korean Peninsula ― the death of DPRK fou

Editorial Oct. 24, 2011