TARP, the infamous Troubled Assets Relief Program that bailed out Wall Street in 2008, is finally over. The Treasury Department recently announced it will soon be completing the sale of the remaining shares it owns of the banks and of General Motors.But it’s not really over. The biggest Wall Street banks are now far bigger than they were four years ago when they were considered too big to fail. The five largest have almost 44 percent of all U.S. bank deposits. That’s up from 37 percent in 2007,

The growth rate of emerging Asian economies is expected to increase in 2013. But inflation and gloomy external conditions still pose a challenge for the macroeconomic policies of many of these economies. In the medium term, their growth rate will be higher than other regions but lower than it was before the global financial crisis. This squarely puts the focus on economic reform and restructuring.Though Asia’s economy is likely to bottom out this year, it will find it difficult to overcome the p

KOCHI, INDIA ― No other country has anything like it ― an annual jamboree of its diaspora, conducted with great fanfare by its government. India has been doing it, with great success, for a decade, timed to recall the return to India of the most famous Indian expatriate of them all, Mahatma Gandhi, who alighted from his South African ship in Bombay on Jan. 9, 1915. As I write, the southern port city of Kochi is overflowing with expatriate Indians celebrating their connection to their motherland.

PARIS ― In less than two years, France has carried out three decisive foreign military interventions. In March 2011, its airstrikes in Libya (alongside those of Great Britain) thwarted Colonel Muammar el-Gadhafi’s troops as they prepared to retake the city of Benghazi. A month later, French forces in Cote d’Ivoire arrested President Laurent Gbagbo, who had refused to recognize his rival’s election victory, putting the country at risk of civil war. Now France has intervened in Mali.The latest int

NEW DELHI ― For Americans weary of nearly a dozen years of war, Afghanistan often seems like a country where nothing ever changes and the same story of ethnic and tribal struggle repeats itself in an endless loop. But Afghanistan’s demographics have changed in significant ways over the past decade. Rather than being mired in a perpetual feudal twilight, it’s actually becoming a modern country. The statistical evidence of change, gathered from USAID data and other sources, is overwhelming. The ur

PARIS ― Socialist French President Francois Hollande is in the pilot’s seat in the world’s latest military incursion. We’re not used to seeing the French lead the way into battle, but it’s becoming increasingly frequent.Some 63 percent of the French support Hollande’s decision to take military action in Mali, according to a poll conducted by the French Institute of Public Opinion. So why have the French suddenly developed such an itchy trigger finger?Under center-right former President Nicolas S

It has become accepted economic wisdom that the only way to get control over America’s looming budget deficits is to “reform entitlements.”The accepted wisdom is wrong.Republicans trot out federal budget data showing a 32 percent increase in direct payments to individuals since the start of 2009 ― including food stamps, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation and subsidized housing.But these expenditures are temporary. They’ve resulted from the deepest economic downturn since the Great Dep

A group of lawmakers are moving to set a statutory quota of women directors at public institutions to break the glass ceiling. Rep. Chung Mong-joon of the ruling Saenuri Party and 61 other legislators have proposed a bill requiring state-run corporations and other public organizations to raise the ratio of women on their boards to 15 percent in three years and 30 percent in five years.The move is justified, given the dearth of women in the boardrooms of public as well as private corporations in

During her presidential campaign, President-elect Park Geun-hye promised to write down the debts of some 3.2 million people by setting up an 18-trillion-won fund, dubbed the National Happiness Fund.At the center of her scheme lay the Korea Asset Management Corp., a state-run agency specializing in resolution of non-performing loans acquired from financial institutions. KAMCO was supposed to secure 1.8 trillion won in seed money and issue bonds, as allowed by law, 10 times the amount of that seed

NEW HAVEN ― As U.S. President Barack Obama begins his second term, he needs a simple way to express his vision and policies for the economy ― a metaphor around which support for his policies might crystallize, thereby boosting his administration’s political effectiveness. So, what makes a successful metaphor work?The 2008 Obama campaign used the slogan “Change we can believe in.” But “change” is not a metaphor for a new government: it does not stand for any policies. Nor does “Hope” or “Yes we c

How would you feel if your baby was seized from your arms by government officials? Just ask a Korean-born American mother. How would you feel if you were being investigated by the prosecution for child abduction for adopting a child? Ask the same mother. How would you feel if you were accused of violating adoption law for assisting a mother in having her child adopted by a loving family? Ask a young dedicated Korean director of a homeless shelter for women. And how would you feel if you were bei

MELBOURNE ― Should rich countries ― or investors based there ― be buying agricultural land in developing countries? That question is raised in Transnational Land Deals for Agriculture in the Global South, a report issued last year by the Land Matrix Partnership, a consortium of European research institutes and nongovernmental organizations.The report shows that since 2000, investors or state bodies in rich or emerging countries have bought more than 83 million hectares (more than 200 million acr

If his government proceeds to review apologies that Japan previously tendered for its World War II aggression, new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be starting his diplomacy with Asian countries on the wrong foot.His Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga has indicated there might be a review of the decision in 1993 to apologize for direct Japanese coercion of 200,000 women from Korea, China, the Philippines and other Asian countries into brothels to serve Japanese soldiers during World W

DA NANG, Vietnam ― A mystery pervades this part of the world.In the Middle East, Africa, Russia, parts of Europe ― even the United States ― thousands of angry citizens have stood up to challenge their governments over the last two years. In several cases, of course, they have thrown dictators out of office.But here in Asia, home to some of the world’s most authoritarian nations, we’ve seen none of that at all. Vietnam, however, may be setting a path for other Asian states. Late last month, the s

WASHINGTON ― Growing chaos in the liberated areas of northern Syria is convincing some members of the Syrian opposition that the country will become a “failed state” unless an orderly political transition begins soon to replace President Bashar al-Assad. This stark analysis is contained in an intelligence report provided to the State Department last week by Syrian sources working with the Free Syrian Army. Describing the situation in the area from Aleppo to the Turkish border, where Assad’s army

Women hold up half the sky, as Mao Zedong once declared. Decades later, they don’t hold up much of anything in the halls of Chinese power. In 2012, Liu Yang proved the inverse of Mao’s point, at least as far as China is concerned. The 34-year-old became the first Chinese woman to orbit the Earth. Her milestone highlighted a less heavenly reality: It’s easier for a Chinese woman to circle our planet in outer space than to reach the highest rungs of male-dominated Beijing politics. Expectations th

It’s very likely that kids will find this column to be, like, totally stupid, and will conclude that they can write one sooooo much better. They will declare this on their Twitter feed, sandwiched between the hundreds of photos of themselves making that pursed-lips “duck face,” then wait for the “friends” they’ve never met in person to tell them how hot they look.That’s because compared with 30 years ago, more American students think they’re above average in writing, leadership, intelligence, dr

NEWPORT BEACH ― Watching America’s leaders scramble in the closing days of 2012 to avoid a “fiscal cliff” that would plunge the economy into recession was yet another illustration of an inconvenient truth: messy politics remains a major driver of economic developments.In some cases during 2012, politics was a force for good: consider Prime Minister Mario Monti’s ability to pull Italy back from the brink of financial turmoil. But, in other cases, like Greece, political dysfunction aggravated econ

WASHINGTON ― It’s telling that one of Chuck Hagel’s favorite gifts to friends recently has been a biography of President Dwight Eisenhower, a war hero whose skepticism toward the military is a model for Hagel’s own. Thinking about Eisenhower’s presidency helps clarify the challenges and dilemmas of Barack Obama’s second term. Like Ike, Obama wants to pull the nation back from the overextension of global wars of the previous decade. Like Ike, he wants to trim defense spending and reduce the natio

Dear kids,It must be heartbreaking mourning the death of your mother, uncle, and father in your tender years. And the manner of their untimely passing must be especially difficult to understand. It’s hard for me to even imagine the extent of your grief and the depth of your sorrow. Although I don’t know you personally, I’ve been a fan of your mother, and a grief-stricken admirer of her work. Now, after reading the sad news of your father’s death, I have become a sympathizing stranger. Clearly, y