The other day I stopped into my neighborhood bistro for a bite. It’s usually a laid-back place, with a great jazz soundtrack, but when two guys in dark suits walked in, the mood chilled. They were “fiscais” ― Rio shorthand for city inspectors ― snooping for irregularities. Proprietors in Rio de Janeiro dread these sorts of visits: Fiscais always find something. They might be persuaded to look the other way, for a price. Brazilians call it wetting the official hand.With Brazil in the global headl

As a government official with responsibility to attract foreign investment into one of Korea’s free economic zones, I made an official trip to Hong Kong and Singapore a few months ago to meet and exchange ideas with prospective investors. Foreign capitalists I had meetings with shared their opinions on and insights into investing in Korea. The very first thing they mentioned was Korea’s stubborn regulatory burdens for capital investment. According to an indicator of government regulatory burdens

Part of the mystery of Ukraine is why, after two historic popular uprisings in a single decade against a political system corrupted by business tycoons, Ukrainians would choose yet another billionaire as president. Part of the tragedy of Ukraine is that Ukrainians didn’t have much choice.Sunday’s presidential election was fought among three wealthy candidates: the chocolate magnate Petro Poroshenko, fellow billionaire Serhiy Tigipko and former “gas princess” Yulia Tymoshenko. Exit polls suggest

Thaksin Shinawatra is living proof that leaders get the popularity thing all wrong. From Barack Obama to Indonesia’s Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, they try governing well, articulating a vision and inspiring ― and their approval ratings plummet.Thailand’s Thaksin tried a different approach. From 2001 to 2006, the tycoon broke laws, lined his pockets, neutered courts and was even accused of crimes against humanity in a war against drugs, then fled overseas in 2008 to avoid prison. Yet nearly eight ye

In the early 1990s, a fierce East-West debate arose over whether or not the economic success of Asia was due to Asian values of hard work, fealty and paternalistic government, largely attributable to Confucianism, Islam, Hinduism and other Asian cultures. The debate faded when the Asian financial crisis cut back the hubris on both sides, and especially after the triumphalism of the West was shattered by the Great Recession of 2007-2009. There was a subtle shift when Francis Fukuyama published th

Sen. Mitch McConnell’s easy victory over his tea party opponent in Kentucky’s Republican primary Tuesday presents a tidy storyline: the establishment strikes back.In the primary season so far, McConnell and fellow GOP incumbents have successfully out-organized and outspent such challengers from their right. And yet even as they rack up wins, they are revealing how the tea party already won the battle for influence in the Republican Party.The GOP’s civil war now looks more like a merger: the esta

LAGUNA BEACH, California ― The morning drive to my 11-year old daughter’s school is always fun, and often a source of insight. That was certainly the case last week when she pointed out something about Frozen, the hugely popular Disney film, that had totally escaped me. “It’s unusual,” she said, “to see a Disney movie in which they end up telling us not to marry someone we’ve just met.”Quite early on in the movie, Princess Anna meets Prince Hans at her sister Princess Elsa’s coronation ball. The

PARIS ― The U.S. Justice Department filed charges this week against five Chinese military officers, accusing them of hacking American companies to steal secrets, including the nuclear energy company Westinghouse. In March, reports surfaced that the National Security Agency had hacked and spied on the Chinese telecom company Huawei.Hard power hitting soft targets: This is a new characteristic of the rebooted Cold War. Except that even NATO has yet to recognize that economic warfare is just as cri

Listening to the complaints about “vote-buying” by some of the sore losers of the recent legislative election or watching some of them going nuts after losing, one could almost be forgiven for thinking that the election had been a total disgrace or Indonesia’s democracy had gone to the dogs.But the following points are more than enough to dispel these notions: 1) the antics and semantics of the losers do not explain vote-buying but indicates how much money they had spent with nothing to show for