[Amity Shlaes] Four ways the U.S. can help Japan, also itself

How can we help?That’s the first question that comes to American minds as the size and scope of Japan’s disaster unfolds. Click on PayPal to send money for emergency shelters. Sponsor a child from Sendai. Encourage General Electric Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt to send nuclear engineers.This week of horror has generated record good will in the U.S. toward Japan.There is a way the U.S. can help. O

March 15, 2011

[William Pesek] Roubini quake gloom meets ‘shock doctrine’

It always struck me as odd that Japanese bookstores have not just earthquake sections, but entire aisles of titles devoted to tectonic upheavals. After Friday’s big one, I’m now a believer in quake-olgy. Temblors have a complicated place in the Japanese psyche. There’s a widely held belief, a local mythology, that tectonic-plate shifts can coincide with big ones above the ground, too. An 1855 eart

March 15, 2011

Make no mistakes handling nuclear accident

The horrible damage caused by the massive earthquake that struck a wide area of eastern Japan on Friday has gradually become clear.Coastal cities and towns in three prefectures in the Tohoku region ― Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima ― have been devastated. Large tsunamis struck only minutes to several dozen minutes after the Tohoku Pacific Offshore Earthquake occurred, washing away houses and automobil

March 14, 2011

[Doyle McManus] One step at a time on Libya

The debate over Libya this week in Washington isn’t about what the U.S. goal should be. President Obama settled that question last week when he declared: “It’s time for Gadhafi to go.” He’s reaffirmed that message several times, and leaders of the most important U.S. allies in Europe ― Britain, Germany and France ― have made similar statements.Instead, the question is what role the United States a

March 14, 2011

[Trudy Rubin] We mustn’t initiate a Libya no-fly zone

As Libyan rebels are pushed back by the forces of the mad Col. Moammar Gadhafi, we’re all rooting for the underdog.Even though we know little about the rebels and their leaders, we assume they’d be an improvement over the crazed colonel. But that emotional tug doesn’t justify the proposal by three influential senators ― Republicans Mitch McConnell and John McCain, and Democrat John Kerry ― that we

March 14, 2011

[Editorial] Judicial reform

In February last year, the ruling Grand National Party and the main opposition Democratic Party agreed to resume efforts to reform the judiciary and the prosecution, a project that was promoted by lawmakers of the 17th National Assembly but has since been left on the back burner. The main impetus behind the latest legislative campaign was the two parties’ desire to correct what they saw as the pol

March 13, 2011

[Editorial] Quake in Japan

A Herculean rescue and recovery operation is under way in Japan following Friday’s devastating earthquake and tsunami. The quake, which hit Japan’s northeastern coast, measured 9.0 in magnitude, the strongest ever recorded in that country. It triggered a ferocious, 10-meter tsunami that swept away everything in its path. To make matters worse, radiation leaked from a quake-damaged nuclear reactor

March 13, 2011

Beware risks ‘on the cloud’ in e-mail accounts

Tens of thousands of Gmail users had a rude shock recently when they logged in only to find all their messages had vanished. Google has restored their e-mail from tape backup by this week, but the inadvertent deletion (during a software upgrade) must raise concerns over security and trust in applications that share remote databases beyond the control of individual users. There were no reports that

March 13, 2011

Harmony-breaking words from a U.S. official

The assemblies of Okinawa Prefecture and two cities in the prefecture ― Naha and Urasoe ― on Tuesday unanimously adopted resolutions protesting comments by a U.S. official that allegedly disparaged the Okinawans. Other Okinawan assemblies will follow suit. In an off-the-record lecture in Washington in December before 14 students who were about to visit Tokyo and Okinawa, Kevin Maher, head of the o

March 13, 2011

[William Pesek] Prada gets my $1,500 as poor can live in envy

In the annals of fashionable timing, Prada SpA’s trip to Asia deserves a mention. It’s blowing off Milan and taking the largest initial public offering of a family-owned Italian company since 2006 to Hong Kong. The reason investors in Prada’s hometown must reach 5,800 miles away to buy the stock: Asia’s hot, Europe’s not. It gets even better for Prada. The $2 billion IPO will hit the investment ca

March 13, 2011

[Eric Jackson] Steve Jobs’s hottest app may be succession plan

Apple Inc. suffers from a Steve Jobs discount, and it’s not fair.Ever since Jobs, the chief executive officer, disclosed that he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer in August 2004, Apple’s stock has been underpriced. That assertion may seem absurd, given that the shares have risen more than 2,000 percent since then and the company’s market value of $325 billion is second only to that of Exxon Mob

March 13, 2011

[Annette Heuser] Gadhafi’s end depends on one power stepping up

The turmoil in much of the Arab world has grown into more than a regional protest by peoples seeking to overthrow repressive regimes. Successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have spurred demonstrations from Morocco to Iran and now, tragically, conflict in Libya which increasingly looks like civil war.The criminal acts of that country’s leader, Moammar Gadhafi, demand foreign intervention. With t

March 13, 2011

It’s not time to tap the strategic oil reserve

Whenever gasoline prices spike, it’s a pretty good bet that politicians are going to propose tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This time around, the talk started with Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who last week urged President Obama to consider selling oil from the reserve as a way to stabilize prices. Then on Sunday, White House

March 11, 2011

[Editorial] Price stability

The Bank of Korea raised its benchmark rate from 2.75 percent to 3 percent on Thursday. On the same day, President Lee Myung-bak promised a shift in policy from growth to price stability. It was better late than never for both the central bank and the Lee administration to renew their resolve to fight inflation.Following the rate increase, the Bank of Korea governor implied the central bank will t

March 11, 2011