NEWPORT BEACH ― History is full of people and institutions that rose to positions of supremacy only to come crashing down. In most cases, hubris ― a sense of invincibility fed by uncontested power ― was their undoing. In other cases, however, both the rise and the fall stemmed more from the unwarranted expectations of those around them.Over the last few years, the central banks of the largest advanced economies have assumed a quasi-dominant policymaking position. In 2008, they were called upon t

The Washington Post called Chris Christie’s huge gubernatorial victory a “clear signal in favor of pragmatic, as opposed to ideological, governance.” But the mainstream media used a different adjective to describe Bill de Blasio, Election Day’s other landslide victor. The New York Times, for example, wrote of “the rise of the left-leaning Mr. de Blasio.”Again and again, Christie is being described as the pragmatist; De Blasio, as the lefty. But in light of America’s surging inequality, the label

PRINCETON, New Jersey ― Sugar is sweet, but the ethics of its production is anything but appealing. “Sugar Rush,” a recent report released by Oxfam International as part of its “Behind the Brands” campaign, has shown that our use of sugar implicates us in land grabs that violate the rights of some of the world’s poorest communities. Better-informed and more ethical consumers could change this.We are genetically programmed to like sweet things, and when people become more affluent, they consume m

Although 90 percent of democratic politics is about good timing and seizing the opportunities, sooner or later you will have to do the remaining 10 percent and nothing else. In other words, you can lie, pretend, manipulate, get a payback or “play” politics all you like, but keep in mind that genuine “conscience” has a place in politics, too. The time will always come when you can no longer point at something that is seriously wrong and tell the people that it is right.The Pheu Thai Party’s amnes

The endless rows between political camps over presidential “NLL remarks” and the “NIS interference” in presidential election are too annoying. To get away from the noise, take a trip to one of our beautiful islands, the remoter the better. In cool breezes and under twinkling stars and immersed in the delight of marine delicacies, you realize how insignificant those current topics are. In the weekly “Koreans’ Meal Table (bapsang)” program on KBS-1 TV, actor Choe Bul-am takes us to the hinterland