TOKYO — The Bank of Japan, this country’s equivalent of the Federal Reserve, has lately been making a big effort to end deflation, which has afflicted Japan’s economy for almost two decades. At first its efforts — which involve printing a lot of money and, even more important, trying to assure investors that it will keep printing money until inflation reaches 2 percent — seemed to be going well. B

Even if Republicans take the Senate this year, gaining control of both houses of Congress, they won’t gain much in conventional terms: They’re already able to block legislation, and they still won’t be able to pass anything over the president’s veto. One thing they will be able to do, however, is impose their will on the Congressional Budget Office, heretofore a nonpartisan referee on policy propo

Next week Scotland will hold a referendum on whether to leave the United Kingdom. And polling suggests that support for independence has surged over the past few months, largely because pro-independence campaigners have managed to reduce the “fear factor” — that is, concern about the economic risks of going it alone. At this point the outcome looks like a tossup. Well, I have a message for the Sco

A few weeks ago, I met Barry Arakelian a minute after he got scammed at a Tom Petty concert. Arakelian had paid a scalper $375 for two tickets (face value: $135) outside the Beacon Theater in Manhattan. The tickets, however, turned out to be fakes, and Arakelian, who was getting the evil eye from his girlfriend, approached a nearby police officer for help. But the officer said that he couldn’t do

From left, Bui Thi Thuy and Kim Tae-goo and To Thi Vien and Kim Wan-su prepared for weddings in Vietnam and life in South Korea.Credit...Norimitsu Onishi/The New York Times HANOI, Vietnam — It was midnight here in Hanoi, or already 2 a.m. back in Seoul, South Korea. But after a five-hour flight on a recent Sunday, Kim Wan-su was driven straight from the airport to the Lucky Star karaoke bar here,

Daryl Foriest, director of distribution at the Food Bank’s pantry and soup kitchen in Harlem, was skeptical at first of the Toyota engineers’ efforts. “The line of people waiting to eat is too long,” he told them. “Make the line shorter.” They did.Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times The Food Bank for New York City is the country’s largest anti-hunger charity, feeding about 1.5 million people

Drinker Biddle & Reath, a Philadelphia firm, trains its new associates to be lawyers. Here, Matthew McDonald, a partner, passes out instructions.Credit...Laura Pedrick for The New York Times PHILADELPHIA — The lesson today — the ins and outs of closing a deal — seems lifted from Corporate Lawyering 101. “How do you get a merger done?” asks Scott B. Connolly, an attorney. There is silence from thre

Of all the recent twists in the Syria saga, one of the most unexpected has been the sudden return to relevance of the United Nations, now holding its General Assembly in New York, and its otherwise invisible secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. Since he came into office six-and-a-half years ago, Ban has remained remarkably anonymous, despite occupying one of the world’s most high-profile jobs. This obs

HOUSTON — “The Circle,” Dave Eggers’s runaway best seller, is a futuristic nightmare that seems to have touched a nerve. The Circle is a social networking firm with an Edenic campus and a totalitarian grip on its employees’ lives; it forces them to socialize online at a dizzying pace, constantly messaging, friending, liking and answering surveys. In this novel, 21st-century capitalism has gone far

The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is moving to lift Japan’s ban on the export of weapons. This is an integral part of Mr. Abe’s “proactive pacifism,” his political slogan for policies that would make a greater contribution to world order and peace. But it is not at all clear how the world would benefit from having another arms-exporting state — a potentially huge exporter given Japan’s e

Rising inequality isn’t a new concern. Oliver Stone’s movie “Wall Street,” with its portrayal of a rising plutocracy insisting that greed is good, was released in 1987. But politicians, intimidated by cries of “class warfare,” have shied away from making a major issue out of the ever-growing gap between the rich and the rest. That may, however, be changing. We can argue about the significance of B