Word: washingtons
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...flawless - he was slow to grasp the crisis and start yanking interest rates down toward zero, and market watchers will forever second-guess the decision to let Lehman go under. But overall he's been courageous and innovative and (so far) successful. And while he's fairly new to Washington, he's shown a flair for politics and p.r., doing a memorable 60 Minutes interview at the height of the crisis, providing an important vote of confidence for Obama's stimulus package and getting the theater as well as the substance right at several key congressional hearings. (Read "Bernanke Defends...
...That said, there's something a bit creepy about the megapower that's accumulating at the Fed, one of Washington's least accountable institutions. Why should the markets decide who oversees them? Haven't the markets decided enough? Bernanke may be the ideal benevolent financial despot - a nebbishy superscholar with minimal connections to Wall Street and no previous hunger for power - but the next Fed chairman may be less ideal. And Obama has proposed to give even more regulatory power to the Fed, even though it has shown little interest in the past in curbing the excesses of the markets...
...vaunted reputation as the world's "Hermit Kingdom" - the ostensibly inscrutable nation that leaves the outside world guessing about what goes on inside its borders - North Korea can also be predictable. Since at least the early 1990s, Pyongyang's relations and level of engagement with its neighbors and with Washington have swung wildly from outright hostility toward rapprochement and back again. No matter how tense things get, Kim Jong Il (like his father Kim Il Sung before him) always steps back from the ledge and tries to re-engage...
...North, in other words, has now successfully placed the onus on Washington's shoulders. How will the U.S. respond? It's no secret that the Obama Administration came into office inclined to deal directly with Pyongyang. But the North's serial hostility in the first months of the Administration took Washington by surprise. It returned the hostility by tightening financial sanctions against the North and by insisting, in the phrase of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, that there was no chance the Administration would buy the "same horse twice" in negotiations with North Korea. That is, it was not going...
...Seoul tells TIME that South Korea will allow the disbursement of economic aid to the North "in parallel" with the progress North Korea makes on denuclearization. The official says this has always been Lee Myung Bak's policy, and it's not likely that there is any daylight between Washington and Seoul on this issue. (See pictures of the border between the Koreas...