The tax bill passed last month perpetuates the huge unfunded giveaways to the rich that have for a generation increasingly divided our nation. Rebuilding the American middle class requires tackling this growing divide head-on. If our politicians won’t or can’t, then ordinary Americans must and can.Those who believe the tax deal gives too much to the top should devote at least some of their tax cut

About 10 presidential hopefuls made their entries in the opinion polls conducted by major dailies and broadcasters at the beginning of the year. Park Geun-hye of the governing Grand National Party commanded supporting rates ranging from a high of 42.3 percent (MBC) to a low of 29.8 percent (Seoul Shinmun) with Ryu Shi-min of the People’s Participation Party and Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon trailing neck

From sometime in the latter part of this year, Koreans will have four new cable TV broadcasters of general programs and a news cable channel, all of which will be owned by newspapers and a news agency. The Korea Communications Commission says that the media restructuring will contribute to improvement of broadcasting content and globalization of the TV industry as well as diversification of inform

NEW YORK ― The time has come for New Year’s resolutions, a moment of reflection. When the last year hasn’t gone so well, it is a time for hope that the next year will be better.For Europe and the United States, 2010 was a year of disappointment. It’s been three years since the bubble broke, and more than two since Lehman Brothers’ collapse. In 2009, we were pulled back from the brink of depression

A year ago, we predicted that Texas Gov. Rick Perry would beat Bill White for re-election and that Congress would pass President Barack Obama’s health care bill. But we failed to see that a lagging economic recovery would mean Republicans would win back the U.S. House and make big Senate gains.Undaunted, we tackle 2011:January: Fox News announces that Sarah Palin’s son, Track, will participate in

Perhaps the simplest thing to say about the law in 2010 is this: Never in America were so many judged by so few with such inconclusive results.As our population rose, and Americans filed 100 million or so lawsuits, the role of the courts somehow shrank in our lives. Dozens of federal judgeships remained empty throughout the year, the victim of partisan bickering on Capitol Hill. State judicial sys

NEW YORK ― As Swedish prosecutors’ sex-crime allegations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange play out in the international media, one convention of the coverage merits serious scrutiny. We know Assange by name. But his accusers ― the two Swedish women who have brought the complaints against him ― are consistently identified only as “Miss A” and “Miss W,” and their images are blurred.News orga

An era of high inflation is coming. China has raised its interest rates for the second time since mid-October. This move has been made to counter the country’s fastest-growing inflation rate in more than two years. Additional fiscal moves are expected as China is currently battling against various economic bubbles.In spite of Chinese officials’ efforts to curb real estate speculation, property pri

The Clean Air Act turned 40 this year, as did the Environmental Protection Agency, which was created to enforce that new law and others Congress adopted to reduce all types of pollution. But it has taken this many years for the EPA to begin flexing its regulatory muscles to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the principle culprit linked to climate change.For many years the agency claimed that the

The global financial crisis has offered China a good opportunity to review its ability to manage its increasing national wealth. During the past three decades China has developed into the world’s largest foreign reserves holder and net capital exporter from a country that lacked reserves and foreign investment. The country has changed from being a debtor to become the world’s second largest credit

WASHINGTON ― A light-bulb moment for me last year was hearing a Chinese defense expert named Dingli Shen in Shanghai talk about the future of warfare. No, he wasn’t expressing a pipe dream about building a blue-water navy to challenge U.S. dominance in the Pacific. Instead, he was talking about the irrelevance of traditional land and sea power in the dawning age of combat ― where weapons will incl

For better and for worse, Julian Assange pushes limits. In his work life and his sex life, he stands at the border dividing legal conduct from criminality, though it’s not clear which side of that border he occupies. U.S. officials are looking for a way to prosecute him for publishing secrets while women in Sweden say he crossed the line between consensual romps and rape. Mainstream journalists sa

Japanese politician Ichiro Ozawa describes himself as a mere ippeisotsu (foot soldier) in the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), giving the innocuous term a whole new meaning.For despite what he claims, Ozawa is undoubtedly the most powerful politician in Japan today.No other politician in the country attracts as much attention or controversy ― not even Prime Minister Naoto Kan.Even though Oz

BERKELEY ― The central insight of macroeconomics is a fact that was known to John Stuart Mill in the first third of the 19th century: there can be a large gap between supply and demand for pretty much all currently produced goods and services and types of labor if there is an equally large excess demand for financial assets. And this fundamental fact is a source of big trouble.A normal gap between