TOKYO — Shinzo Abe took office as Japan's seventh prime minister in six years Wednesday and vowed to overcome the deep-rooted economic and diplomatic crises facing his country.Abe was elected as Japan's leader hours earlier Wednesday, brin…

By GARY GUTTING Is work good or bad? A fatuous question, it may seem, with unemployment such a pressing national concern. (Apart from the names of the two candidates, "jobs" was the politically relevant word most used by speakers at the Re…

I JUST arrived in Shanghai, but I’m thinking about Estonia and wondering about something Presidents Clinton and Obama have been saying. Wired magazine reported last week that public schools in Estonia are establishing a program for teachin…

Spe 6, 2012Traveling through Asia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found some time to watch the speech her husband delivered at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night.The State Department distributed a photograph of Secre…

Oct 04, 2012 A new world is rising, in which growing disorder looms on every continent and in which global anarchy prevails.In the Middle East, where tens of thousands of Syrians are dying in a civil war, we are reminded every day a bit mo…

Sep 16, 2012There is no shortage of dramatic news this week – what with a disappearing Chinese leader, a murdered ambassador in Benghazi, riots in Cairo and protests in Madrid and Moscow. But I wonder whether less obviously world-shaking e…

October 20, 2012President Obama introduced a new word into the American political lexicon Friday, accusing his GOP opponent, Mitt Romney, of “Romnesia” for changing positions and trying to pivot to the political center.Before nearly 10,000…

A new world is rising, in which growing disorder looms on every continent and in which global anarchy prevails.In the Middle East, where tens of thousands of Syrians are dying in a civil war, we are reminded every day a bit more of the hor…

竹中平蔵 慶應義塾大学教授 ［東京 １日 ロイター］ 「米国の影響力は低下している。しかし、世界の問題は米国抜きでは解決しない」。国際政治の大家として知られるハーバード大学のジョセフ・ナイ教授（元米国防次官補）は著書などを通じて、かねてよりそう…

(Reuters) - Tolstoy may have been right about families - "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" - but the opposite of his famous first line is true when it comes to countries: The world's disparate un…

Close families and flexible labor markets don’t go together. That’s the conclusion of a fascinating paper by a quartet of transatlantic economists. Their work should be required reading for all European politicians and for the economists a…

(Reuters) - Spending time with top European policy makers at the moment is scary and slightly nauseating, like the final, slow-motion moments of a car accident, when you can see precisely both how you will probably crash and what it would …

In Europe, Parallels to Japan’s ‘Lost Decade’ By MARK SCOTT LONDON — Is Europe the new Japan?Parallels abound between Europe’s current debt crisis and Japan’s so-called Lost Decade, when the Asian country’s economy imploded in the 1990s.Bo…

Never Mind Europe. Worry About India.By TYLER COWEN THE economic slowdown in India is one of the world’s biggest economic stories, but it is commanding only a modicum of attention in the United States. It may not even look like a slowdown …

U.S. Chose Better Path to RecoveryBy FLOYD NORRIS Last summer, things looked bad on both sides of the Atlantic. There were fears of double-dip recessions, and stubbornly high unemployment rates. Stock markets swooned. Now, the pictures app…

http://blogs.reuters.com/chrystia-freeland/2012/03/29/manufacturing-redux/

Broccoli and Bad FaithBy PAUL KRUGMAN Nobody knows what the Supreme Court will decide with regard to the Affordable Care Act. But, after this week’s hearings, it seems quite possible that the court will strike down the “mandate” — the requ…

http://blogs.reuters.com/thinking-global/2012/04/18/does-america-still-want-to-lead-the-world/

My new book, Financial Turmoil in Europe and the United States,1 tries to explain and, to the extent possible, predict the outcome of the euro crisis. It follows the same pattern as my other books: it contains an updated version of my conc…

In the history of product launches, the rollout of the Obama Administration’s plan to stabilize the financial system was in the category of “Ishtar,” smokeless cigarettes, and New Coke. On February 10th of last year, the newly appointed Tr…

On the last day of 2011, a headline in The Wall Street Journal read: “Spain Misses Deficit Target, Sets Cuts.” The cruel forces of poor economic logic were at work to welcome in the new year. The European Union has become a vicious circle …

The Myth of Japan’s FailureBy EAMONN FINGLETON Tokyo DESPITE some small signs of optimism about the United States economy, unemployment is still high, and the country seems stalled. Time and again, Americans are told to look to Japan as a …