The recent turmoil in emerging markets raises an urgent question: If things get worse, if markets plunge or a government defaults, do regulators know which banks, hedge funds or other institutions are most at risk?Almost six years after the crash, with financial regulation overhauled in the U.S. and elsewhere, you’d expect the answer to be yes. Actually, the short answer is no. Regulators charged with overseeing the financial system have vastly more data than they did before the last crisis, but

My last visit to Dongguan, China’s widely acknowledged and often acclaimed prostitution capital, was in 2011 (for a factory visit), and included a breakfast meeting at a well-known U.S. chain hotel, in view of the elevators that whisk customers to their rooms. It was a memorable meal: Over eggs, my companions and I watched as those elevators discharged a flood of young women, one after the other, yawning and rubbing their eyes, clad in last night’s high-cut dresses. Not one stopped for breakfast

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic policy package, dubbed Abenomics, is being put to the test in terms of whether it will achieve stable and sustainable growth.The nation’s real-term gross domestic product for the October-December period of last year edged up 0.3 percent over the previous quarter, according to the Cabinet Office, marking the fourth straight quarterly growth and a growth of 1 percent on an annualized basis.Personal consumption saw significant expansion as the demand fo

Haze is spreading across the region once again as companies slash and burn to create plantations; we need collective action to snuff out this annual problem.It arrives every year around this time, when dry weather prompts people in Indonesia’s Sumatra to burn forest and scrub to make way for plantations. Fires send plumes of smoke into the air, where wind ― sometimes storm force ― blows it across the region. Neighboring Singapore, Malaysia and southern Thailand are blanketed in a choking haze th

Thailand has ample company in the use of agricultural subsidies as a partisan tool in politics, by distorting international commodity trade to favor home producers. But unfortunately, it has chosen strange company to keep, given the high costs of such programs.In Japan, the farm vote is a pillar in the Liberal Democratic Party’s longevity. In the United States, targeted price supports in farm states influence presidential and congressional elections.Principal Bric nations China and Brazil have j

Ever since a wave of conservative insurgents arrived in Washington after the congressional election of 2010, Congress has careened from one tea party-inspired fiscal crisis to another, from the debt-ceiling showdown of 2011 to last year’s 16-day government shutdown.But last week, when the debt ceiling needed to be raised again, conservative Republicans decided not to fight. They still voted no, but they meekly stood aside to let the ceiling rise.“You’ve got to know when to hold them and when to

The Voyager 1 spacecraft is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. Even if defined only by distance, the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory twin Voyagers are America’s greatest space adventure. They’ve been flying successfully for more than 36 years and are billions of miles from home. What isn’t widely known is that they almost never made it out there.The first proposed mission in the late 1960s was for four spacecraft to take advantage of a rare alignment of the four outer

NEW YORK ― The Winter Olympics in Sochi are the first to be hosted by Russia since the Cold War-era Moscow Summer Games in 1980. Obviously, much has changed politically in the interim. But today’s games also create an opportune moment to look back at Russia’s recent economic history ― and to peer forward as well.Many people who remember the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and its tumultuous aftermath believe that Russia’s economy today must be impoverished and unstable ― and far behind boom

There were several reports this month about the Affordable Care Act, most of them positive: Participation is up; the so-called risk corridors, which critics call a giveaway to insurance companies, will make the government money; and the law will increase labor demand.But more attention has been lavished on the negative: Over a decade, the equivalent of 2.5 million workers will drop out of the labor force because there are alternative health-insurance options, and the employment mandate was postp