South Korean parents are willing to do anything to provide their children with better educational opportunities. Couples do not hesitate to sacrifice even their married lives to provide a better education for their children. Indeed, there are numerous “wild geese fathers” who live in solitude after sending their wives and children to the States for a better education. With prolonged separation, some fathers are even found dead in their empty homes of a heart attack or stroke. Despite protracted

BRASILIA ― The 1945 United Nations Charter represented a historic breakthrough in the pursuit of peace on a multilateral basis. At the end of a global war that claimed more than 50 million lives, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the world’s two major powers. The U.N. Charter, initially negotiated by the U.S., the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom during World War II, established a Security Council containing five permanent members, including France and the Republic of China.A

NEW YORK ― The “branding” of modern central banking started in the United States in the early 1980s under then-Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker. Facing worrisomely high and debilitating inflation, Volcker declared war against it ― and won. In delivering secular disinflation, he did more than change expectations and economic behavior. He also greatly enhanced the Fed’s standing among the general public, in financial markets, and in policy circles.Volcker’s victory was institutionalized

ISTANBUL ― Turkey’s economy has been booming for a decade, earning praise not only from financial markets, but also from development economists like Jeffrey Sachs. Why, then, have peaceful demonstrations that began in Istanbul’s landmark Taksim Square turned into a nationwide protest movement, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets in opposition to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government?Sachs, and others, have rightly acknowledged and praised the Erdogan government

NEW HAVEN ― The high unemployment that we have today in Europe, the United States ― and elsewhere is a tragedy, not just because of the aggregate output loss that it entails, but also because of the personal and emotional cost to the unemployed of not being a part of working society.Austerity, according to some of its promoters, is supposed to improve morale. British Prime Minister David Cameron, an austerity advocate, says he believes that his program reduces “welfare dependency,” restores “rig

Economic forecasters exist to make astrologers look good. But the recent jubilance is enough to make even weather forecasters blush.“The economy is going gangbusters! Just look at consumer spending!”“Look at home prices! Look at the bull market!”Please.I can understand the jubilation in the narrow sense that we’ve been down so long, everything looks up. Plus, economists who are paid by Wall Street or corporations tend to cheerlead because they believe that if consumers and businesses think the f

WASHINGTON ― People are looking for the wrong “scandal” about Attorney General Eric Holder. The problem with Holder is the plain fact that, in the judgment of a wide range of legal colleagues, he has been a mediocre attorney general. Holder’s mistakes in management and judgment are clear in the current controversy about leak investigations. He was silent as zealous prosecutors overrode the Justice Department’s guidelines for subpoenaing reporters; he recused himself from the case, but bizarrely