By many accounts, U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu don’t much like or trust each other. It’s important that they use their meeting on Monday (March 5) to end at least the mistrust. For many months now U.S. diplomacy has been directed as much at stopping an Israeli preemptive military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, as at Iran itself. It’s partly thanks to the tension created by Israel’s threats to act that the Obama administration was finally a

Viewpoints March 5, 2012

Washington had Watergate, Italy bunga bunga-gate, London Murdoch-gate. Now, Hong Kong brings us basement-gate. It’s a scandal that many of us outside the city of 7 million might find hard to fathom. Henry Tang, the favorite to be Hong Kong’s next leader, has an illegal basement. In my mind, that’s only a problem if you are storing drugs, trafficking humans or evading taxes. For Hong Kong residents squeezed by surging rents and living costs, Tang’s underground aerie, which he built without a gove

Viewpoints March 1, 2012

It seems cosmically appropriate that gambling house odds are on “The Artist” to win this year’s Academy Award for best picture. The Weinstein Co.’s paean to the end of the silent movie era is an apt metaphor for an industry upended by new technologies. Whether or not “The Artist” gets an Oscar statuette, the film can teach Hollywood an important lesson: Once technical barriers are broken, they can never be rebuilt. The arrival of talkies required the industry to rethink an antiquated business mo

Viewpoints Feb. 29, 2012

Imagine if you could hear directly, albeit anonymously, from the normally secretive bankers and traders who manufactured and sold the trillions of dollars in toxic debt securities that pushed the world’s financial system to the brink of disaster in 2008. Would they defend themselves and their actions, or show a degree of remorse for what they caused and have not been held accountable for? Well, you can find the answer to that question in “Conversations With Wall Street,” a compact ― and largely

Viewpoints Feb. 29, 2012

Should the U.S. be willing to sacrifice Los Angeles for Taipei? It’s horrendous to contemplate, but it’s the kind of question that underlies a simmering debate over U.S. policy toward Taiwan. As China’s economic and military power grows, and Taiwan’s long-term future remains unclear, that debate deserves a wider airing. The tension, and the stakes, will only increase as the Obama administration undertakes its much-trumpeted “pivot” to Asia. Taiwan didn’t surface as a big issue in Chinese Vice Pr

Viewpoints Feb. 29, 2012

After a recent trip to the Middle East, President Lee Myung-bak has repeatedly urged Korean companies to grab new business opportunities in the region, saying it is in the midst of an oil boom reminiscent of the 1970s and ‘80s. He has also encouraged young people looking for a job to lift up their gaze and look beyond the small domestic market.Lee, formerly president of Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co., has recently visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the three key

Editorial Feb. 29, 2012

Turning a deaf ear to public outcry, lawmakers from the ruling and main opposition parties collaborated on Monday to pass an array of self-serving bills, while leaving many others related to important issues on the back burner.Among the bills they pushed through was the one that proposed to increase the number of National Assembly seats from the current 299 to 300. By passing the widely condemned legislation, lawmakers have confirmed again that their impudence knows no bounds.The bill increases

Editorial Feb. 29, 2012

If Europe’s new plan for Greece succeeds, nobody will be more surprised than the politicians who designed it. At best, the arrangement is a holding action, one that fails yet again to deal with the much larger confidence crisis facing the euro area. The deal announced on Tuesday starts with private lenders. Their representatives agreed to accept even bigger losses on Greek government bonds than previously discussed. The bonds’ face value will be cut by 53.5 percent, and they’ll pay a low interes

Viewpoints Feb. 27, 2012