Score another lamentable election victory for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The fiery, anti-U.S. revolutionary now has another six-year term to continue with the plans he launched after his first election in 1998 to dismantle Venezuela’s free-market economy and pursue his anachronistic socialist agenda.Not long ago, American leaders would’ve had good reason to be concerned about the national security implications of another Chavez term. Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven reserves

In the 1930s, Fortune magazine called weddings a “depression-proof” business; these days, the term is “recession resistant.” That isn’t exactly true, but there’s no denying that the U.S. wedding industry is big business today: Even in a sluggish economy, the average cost of a wedding in 2011 was $26,501, according to a Brides magazine survey. Much of the debt incurred by marriage-bound couples and their families stems directly from a desire to follow tradition ― to purchase the goods and service

The first time I met Raghuram Rajan, the Indian economist couldn’t sit still. It was over coffee in Bangkok in November 2008, less than two months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. imploded and almost took the global financial system down with it. Rajan had become a big draw by then, having warned as early as 2005 that a crash was coming. On that day in Thailand, he had a more local crisis on his hands: The hotel’s WiFi was out. “I’ll be back ― I need to make a call and make sure the world eco

Hugo Chavez is something of a challenge to the worldview of many rich-country observers. His election victory this week has given him, health permitting, a new six-year term as Venezuela’s president. He’s the leading elected autocrat in Latin America and maybe the world. “Elected autocrat” is a confusing category. According to the model that prevailed for decades after 1945, there are really just two kinds of state: free and unfree. Democracy, good. Autocracy, bad. Chavez represents a third way,

In the aftermath of 9/11, the federal government allowed its anxiety about possible future attacks to overwhelm its commitment to due process and the rule of law. An early manifestation of that overreaction was the rounding up of Arab and Muslim men on the pretext of holding them as potential witnesses at the trials of others.One victim of that policy was Abdullah Kidd, who was known as Lavoni Kidd when he played football for the University of Idaho. A convert to Islam, Kidd was arrested in 2003

When former Taiwan Vice President Vincent Siew said last week that he has seldom found Taiwanese society so powerless and lost, he cut his old boss some slack by highlighting the challenge of democratic governance. Gone is the autocratic era when decisions were made by a few people and could be quickly implemented; the president now has to build consensus, Siew later pointed out. Democratic inefficiency has been much talked about after the Great Recession. People were shocked by the ineptitude o

Although both the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the No. 1 opposition Liberal Democratic Party have chosen their new party leaders, the ruling and opposition forces still cannot agree on when to start an extraordinary Diet session. The primary responsibility rests on Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. He must fulfill his promise to then LDP chief Sadakazu Tanigaki to dissolve the Lower House “in the near future” by clearly showing when he will do so. If he does so, the ruling and opposition fo

The world’s finance ministers face a crucial opportunity when they meet this week. At stake is a sustainable economic recovery, but their weighty task is to find the balance between monetary easing and financial discipline that will deliver it.The meeting will focus on the budget stand-off in the U.S. and the debt crisis in Europe.The annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank this year was timely indeed. The gathering of the world’s economic decision-makers came amid

Pyongyang again disappointed those predicting it was about to change its ways. For months, experts and major media organizations have proclaimed imminent economic reform, even declaring that “North Korea has virtually abandoned the planned economy.” A rare second Supreme People’s Assembly this year could only mean codification of free-market principles, or so it was argued.Yet the legislative assembly came and went in late September with nary a whisper of economic reform. What went wrong? There