When the main opposition Democratic Party proposed to rein in rising rent prices by capping their increases in January, the ruling Grand National Party accused its adversary of pushing for an irrational populist idea. In an about-face, the ruling party is now moving to adopt the proposal as its policy. Now what will the GNP say about itself?On Wednesday, the ruling party’s task force, working on a

Entire towns vanished.Simply gone.Thousands dead, thousands more missing and feared dead.Simply gone.And as individual families in Japan and the world as a whole begin to grieve last week’s horrific earthquake and tsunami, we are also learning firsthand about the vulnerability of nuclear energy.The technology that resource-scarce Japan harnessed to become an industrial powerhouse is now becoming a

Pity President Obama: Every time he tries to compromise with Republicans on energy reform by backing dirty or dangerous forms of power generation, a disaster occurs to demonstrate why pursuing such strategies is a bad idea. It happened a year ago when a BP oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico after Obama had been talking up the advantages of expanded offshore drilling, and it’s happening again t

The New York Times characterizes the tsunami that struck coastal Japan as “murderous,” while a friend writes that “Planet Earth is an unfriendly place.” I rode out the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in my seventh-floor apartment in San Francisco, which experience instilled in me an appropriate terror and respect for the fluidity of so-called terra firma. The epicenter of that 6.1 earthquake was locat

Japan’s domestic nuclear crisis is going global in a hurry.Just ask Christine Lagarde, France’s finance minister, who wants to convene Group of Seven talks on a response to Japan’s earthquake. “I’ve asked for a G7 meeting at the level of finance ministers and central bankers to see how we can purchase their bonds and how to respond on the financial level,” she said.The internationalization of this

Supporters of the proposed free-trade agreement between the United States and South Korea argue that we should approve the pact to improve our economy and to reward an ally in a troubled region for its strong security relationship with the United States, and to solidify these strong security ties with a stronger trade relationship. Though there is no doubt South Korea is a close ally, we need to e

A famous 1973 cover of National Lampoon showed a dog with a revolver held to its head, with the caption, “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.” To hear defenders of publicly subsidized media, Republican efforts to cut funding to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System puts a gun to the head of Big Bird. That doesn’t have to be the case. The Corporation for Public B

The 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Japan’s northeastern coast on Friday (March 11) ― the fourth largest in the world since 1900 ― has dwarfed all other headlines. The ensuing 23-foot tsunami traveled miles inland before receding and leaving in its wake a swampy wasteland of debris, buildings set ablaze and over 120 aftershocks.The disaster was brought to the global consciousness through bird

The crisis in Japan stemming from a triple disaster ― a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, a subsequent giant tsunami and blasts at a nuclear power plant ― is deepening, causing concern that it could take a toll on the Korean as well as the global economy. Korean policymakers initially said the impact of the Japanese disaster on the national economy would be temporary and limited. They need to change their

The nuclear crisis in Japan shows no signs of abating. Fears of a major radiation leak heightened on Tuesday following two separate explosions at the earthquake-hit nuclear power plant in Fukushima. The blasts, which occurred at the No. 2 and No. 4 reactors, raised radioactive levels in the surrounding areas, leading Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan to urge people within 30 km of the facility to

The American comic strip Pogo once famously noted, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” This may be the best way to describe the current fracas in Washington over the deficit.Politicians of both parties have done a poor job of educating the public, and voters are sending conflicting, and in some cases, misguided, messages.A Bloomberg National Poll published last week, in line with other surveys,

It takes a crisis, such as the financial meltdown in 2008, to rally support for a Keynesian style fiscal stimulus.It takes another kind of crisis, specifically the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the northeastern coast of Japan last week, to expose the Keynesian fallacy that the government can spend its way to prosperity.For that reason, Acts of God provide a teaching moment. They make the