Accused National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden was handed a golden opportunity to justify himself Wednesday when he was asked by NBC’s Brian Williams whether the American public should view his unauthorized release of thousands of classified U.S. government documents to the media as a principled act of civil disobedience or as a betrayal of his country ― and he blew it.The interview, taped last week, took place at a hotel in Moscow, where Snowden fled last year in order to avoid prosecut

“Tolerance” and “slowdown” clearly mean something different in Beijing’s dictionary.Since November, when the Communist Party announced epochal reforms, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang have rarely missed a chance to say China must accept slower growth. Downshifting to a “new normal” is a necessary evil to regear the economy’s growth engines to services. Six months on, all they’ve done is add more and more stimulus to ensure no end to massive investment and exports.The first sign of sl

President Barack Obama on Wednesday charted a vision for protecting America that relies less on military power and more on training foreign security forces to fight on their own soil. His context: Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have taught American leaders about the power ― and limits ― of U.S. military options.The U.S. still has a vital interest in dismantling terror networks and havens, the president said. Terrorism remains “the most direct threat to America at home and abroad.” But “a strategy

BERKELEY, California ― The best review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” that I have read so far is the one published by my friend and frequent coauthor Lawrence Summers in Michael Tomasky’s Democracy Journal. Go read the whole thing now.Still here? You are, you say, unwilling to read 5,000 words? It would be time well spent, I assure you. But if you are still here, I will offer you neither a synopsis nor highlights, but rather a brief expansion of a very small and minor

PARIS ― An intriguing social phenomenon prompted a horrific killing spree in Santa Barbara, California, last week, and the same phenomenon might help explain the surprising results of last weekend’s European Parliament elections.The suspected Santa Barbara killer, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger, left behind a 141-page diatribe and multiple online videos expressing frustration over a failure to score with the opposite sex, despite ticking what he considered to be all the right boxes: a BMW, nice cloth

MELBOURNE ― Humanity has just about run out of time to address climate change. Scientists have pointed out that a rise in temperature of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels will put the Earth in dangerous, uncharted territory. Yet we currently are on a path toward an increase of 4 degrees or more this century. The last chance for action has arrived.That chance lies in Paris in December 2015, when the world’s governments meet for the 21st annual United Nations climate-change meeting. Bu

Takahiro Mitani finds himself between George Soros and a hard place.Mitani is Japan’s $1.26 trillion man. The Government Pension Investment Fund that he runs tops Mexico’s annual output and dwarfs the Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds that investors are always cooing about. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants the notoriously conservative fund to crank up returns by putting more money in stocks ― with an unlikely assist from billionaire Soros.In January, the world’s most famous short seller chatt

Critics of China are fired up over the World Trade Organization’s ruling on Friday that Chinese tariffs on American-made SUVs and luxury cars violate international rules, coming as it does amid U.S. allegations of Chinese hacking of U.S. businesses. Echoing the rhetoric that helped President Barack Obama win crucial Ohio votes in 2012, Democrats from the industrial Midwest trumpeted the ruling as a “significant victory” for American manufacturing jobs. “It is time for China to start playing by t

College graduation season is in full bloom, and this year American institutions will confer about 1.8 million bachelor’s degrees. As in the past, many of the best and brightest have, or will land, jobs requiring knowledge, skills and critical thinking ― and will be paid good salaries. But increasingly, today’s college graduates face an uncertain future, and many will end up taking jobs historically done by those with high school diplomas or even less ― construction workers, taxi drivers, restaur