The ties between the president and the Saenuri Party, which was formerly the ruling Grand National Party, are coming to a dead end. The situation worsened as President Lee Myung-bak’s chief secretary for liaison with the party resigned for his role in a political payoff scandal that happened three years ago involving the party’s former chairman.The Blue House is looking for a seasoned politician to replace Kim Hyo-jae who is leaving the presidential staff after eight months in office, but whoeve

There are more than 1.5 million small business establishments, mostly eateries, with annual sales of less than 200 million won ($180,000). They pay 1.8 percent fees to credit card companies. Since late last year, owners of these places have moved collectively through their associations to get the rates lowered, threatening to temporarily close their businesses nationwide in protest. They were encouraged to do this after credit card firms were pressured into lowering rates for department stores a

The most avid political junkies probably couldn’t name five U.S. agriculture secretaries; Tom Vilsack, the current occupant of the post, may be about to join that short list. The farm sector is one of the few bright spots in a rough U.S. economy. Vilsack, the popular former governor of Iowa, who has an appreciation of policy and politics, is one of the success stories of the Obama administration. Usually, the Agriculture Department, started under Abraham Lincoln and celebrating its 150th birthda

The $25 billion mortgage-abuse settlement between the states and five top banks that was announced Thursday won’t solve the nation’s housing crisis. Far from it.It will not restore the housing market. The money involved is a fraction of the amount that would make a dent in that.It will not provide direct assistance to the vast majority of distressed homeowners. Most owners aren’t eligible for its most valuable provision ― principal reduction ― because loans guaranteed by the government-controlle

Eight years is an aeon in politics. Witness the waning potency of the gay-marriage issue.During the 2004 campaign, Republican strategists put gay marriage on referendum ballots in key swing states, as a “wedge” issue to unnerve Democrats and gin up the conservative base for President George W. Bush. The Massachusetts high court had just ruled for legalization, and hostility toward the concept was the centrist position in America.This is no longer true.Granted, social conservatives voiced anger l

Last week, a parliamentary standing committee approved a special bill that, if enacted, would shake the foundation of the nation’s financial system. Its members must be held accountable for the bill, which embodied populism at its apex. The bill is aimed at permitting depositors to recoup 55 percent of the money they held in excess of 50 million in their accounts with savings banks at the time when the savings banks were declared insolvent last year. It is also aimed at permitting investors to r

A statute is made invalid when six or more of the nine justices of the Constitutional Court decide that it is unconstitutional. But does it still have to require approval from six or more justices to invalidate a law when one justice post remains vacant? This is not a hypothetical question. It is an actual question that was raised last Thursday when the National Assembly rejected a nominee by the main opposition Democratic United Party for the justice post that had remained unfilled since July 8

In any out-of-court settlement for alleged wrongdoing, the test of whether prosecutors got a good deal rests on the answers to three questions: Does it hold the miscreants accountable? Does it make victims whole? And does it prevent similar misconduct in the future? Thursday’s $25 billion agreement by five banks to end a 16- month investigation of abusive foreclosure practices fails on the first two counts. And we won’t know for some time whether it is successful on the third. Nonetheless, the d

It’s been going on for too long, right before our eyes. Inevitably, someone was going to blow the whistle, and wouldn’t you know it would be Felix Salmon, the famous financial blogger for Reuters? The name Felix Salmon (for some reason) always makes me think of those plastic singing fish that were all the rage a few years ago. You remember: They appeared to be mounted on a board (also plastic) and they would burst remorselessly into song and could be impossible to turn off without opening up the

MOSCOW ― Nonviolent revolutions do not always remain nonviolent, as the examples of uprisings in Egypt, Libya, and Syria in the Arab Spring have shown. But peaceful movements for regime change often do succeed. They have toppled illegitimate rulers, as with the post-Soviet “color revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine, and ended apartheid in South Africa, for example, or, before that, the Jim Crow system in the American South. Nonviolent movements broke British rule in India and Malawi, and brought

The news that the mainstream Palestinian group Fatah has agreed to form a unity government with the militantly Islamist Hamas may move some to dismay. Although there are ample reasons for that reaction, this development may also present an opportunity. Over the past year, the world has changed not just around Israel, but also around the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the two Palestinian territories ruled, respectively, by Hamas and Fatah. That is especially true for Hamas. The Arab Spring has driven