ARTICLES
Japan’s Economy Will Recover Quickly and Grow Fast
While we continue to grieve for the victims of the Japanese earthquake and its aftermath, it is perhaps time to cast a colder eye on the consequences of the country’s worst disaster since the atomic attacks of 1945. What is…
The Pacific Century: Can the U.S. Compete?
Remember those astonishing test scores that came out late last year — the ones that measured science, reading and arithmetic proficiency according to an international standard that included China for the first time? Not even the Chinese could quite believe…
U.S. Productivity Gets a Frightening Wake-up Call
Did you read that item in the paper last week? An air-traffic controller apparently fell asleep at Reagan International Airport in Washington, leaving two planes to land without ground guidance. The controller, now suspended while the incident is investigated, was on…
Why ‘Defunding’ Public Broadcasting Is a Crisis
It’s well enough that we can reasonably rely on the Senate to reject the egregious bill the House approved last week – the one “defunding” public broadcasting. But there the matter cannot sit. The larger question is what value Americans attach…
Japan: The Meltdown of Growth-At-Any-Cost
Long before the worst earthquake in Japan’s history produced the worst nuclearaccident in Japan’s history, nuclear power had acquired a menacing reputation among many Japanese. If the crisis in triplicate at the Fukushima power plant (where four nuclear reactors are…
The Real Reason China Should Worry America
A century ago this year a stupid little book called The Yellow Peril, by one G.G. Rupert, was published to popular acclaim. It was a prejudicial diatribe, but you have to ask how far we’ve come, given how fretful Americans…
The Deficit: Congress Fiddles as America Loses Ground
The recent news from Germany is encouraging for Europe—and sobering for the U.S. Beating all forecasts, unemployment has plunged to its lowest level in nearly 20 years. Business and consumer confidence is hitting records. It is getting hard to flinch…
Goldman-and-Facebook-Insiders-Trade-Others-Keep-Out
Have you received your invitation to invest in Facebook, the not-yet-listed social-networking phenom that has burst onto Wall Street with the excitement of a dot.com company a dozen years ago? I haven’t got mine, either. They must be in the…
A Near Perfect Spy Novelist
ABSOLUTE FRIENDS. By John le Carré. Little, Brown. 455 pp. $26.95. A year ago now, when the Bush Administration was preparing the world for an American invasion of Iraq, John le Carré wrote a column of scathing, sharp-toothed commentary for…
A Kiss in Java
INDONESIAN DESTINIES. By Theodore Friend. Belknap/Harvard. 628 pp. $35. INDONESIA: Peoples and Histories. By Jean Gelman Taylor. Yale. 420 pp. $39.50. In a broad square not far from the center of Jakarta, a large obelisk of concrete soars into the sky….
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