viernes, 14 de enero de 2011

Talking to North Korea

EDITORIAL

Talking to North Korea

Published: January 13, 2011

After two years of threats and attacks, North Korea may be pulling back from the brink. Or not. North Korea’s leadership is so erratic — it’s not even clear who is in charge right now — that it is impossible to tell.

Times Topic: North Korea

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There are a few hopeful signs. On Monday, the North formally invited South Korea to talks on economic ties. On Wednesday, for the first time in seven months, the North used a diplomatic hot line to call the South.

The North’s main patron, China, has also been pushing for a resumption of the six-party talks that the big powers and North Korea’s neighbors say are intended to end the North’s nuclear program. (The North walked out of the last round in 2008.)

North Korea has a long history of making promises, collecting economic rewards and then failing to deliver — or manufacturing crises and demanding more payoffs in return for calming tensions. The United States, South Korea and Japan are understandably reluctant to get fooled again.

But recent events, including the shelling of a South Korean island, have been so alarming that the Obama administration has now decided to nudge the South back to bilateral talks. American officials are also considering their own bilateral dialogue with the North and an eventual return to six-party talks.

These moves are necessary. But there is also a real danger that the North Korean government will misread any opening as weakness and an invitation to act out even more. The only country with any chance of getting through is China, the North’s main supplier of food and fuel. Beijing needs to end its cynical diplomacy-as-usual and use all of its influence to ensure that Pyongyang arrives at the table ready to deal.

Since taking office, President Obama has practiced what aides call “strategic patience” when it comes to the North. He promised engagement, tightened sanctions, strengthened regional alliances and waited for the North to return to serious denuclearization talks.

The North has only gotten more belligerent. It expelled nuclear monitors, conducted a second nuclear test and ginned up production of nuclear fuel. In March, it torpedoed a South Korean navy ship, killing 46 sailors; in November, four South Koreans were killed during the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. Seoul has reacted with extraordinary restraint, but the risk of a wider confrontation grows with each incident.

American officials say that Chinese leaders have recently tried to get North Korea to back away from confrontation. But how much pressure China — which fears a collapse of the North above all else — is prepared to bring is anyone’s guess.

When President Obama and President Hu Jintao of China meet next week in Washington, this must be one of the top items on their agenda. Mr. Obama will have to forcefully argue the case that an erratic neighbor armed with nuclear weapons is anything but a recipe for the stability Beijing so prizes, or for an American military drawdown in the region.

The United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia need to vigilantly enforce sanctions on North Korea and find new ways to increase the pressure. It also makes sense to test the North’s intentions, so long as Washington and its allies go in with their eyes open.

Let’s be clear. Getting the North to give up its nuclear program is a very long shot. But two years of stalemate have only made things more dangerous.

A version of this editorial appeared in print on January 14, 2011, on page A26 of the New York edition.

A Guy Thing? Not That Kind. And Not That Kind Either

MOVIE REVIEW

The Dilemma

A Guy Thing? Not That Kind. And Not That Kind Either.

By A. O. SCOTT

Published: January 13, 2011

If you have seen the ubiquitous advertisements and trailers for “The Dilemma,” you might be forgiven for expecting a semistupid, semisweet, semioffensive guy comedy. It is entirely possible that Imagine Entertainment and Universal Pictures want you to expect just that. The movie’s stars, Vince Vaughn and Kevin James (of“Couples Retreat,” “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” and much else) seem to grin from every billboard and bus shelter, promising beefy and boisterous wintertime high jinks of a kind moviegoers have learned to love, or at least tolerate.

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Kevin James and Vince Vaughn in “The Dilemma.”

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Winona Ryder with Mr. James in “The Dilemma.”

Promotional clips released last year caused some umbrage because they contained homophobic jokes, and those lame gags — about the somehow non-sexually-specific “gayness” of electric cars — are still in the movie, along with the usual exaggerated reassurances that the two main characters, who love each other dearly and whose love is tested by difficult circumstances, are Not Gay. But “The Dilemma,” written by Allan Loeb and directed by Ron Howard — hardly a name associated with frat-boy yukfests — is not entirely what it appears to be. It is less a macho comedy than what you might call a bromantic melodrama, an unabashed weepie with enough beer, sports, fistfights and cars to reassure the snuffling he-men in the audience that their tears are Not ... well, you know.

Still, “The Dilemma” doesn’t entirely dispense with the trappings of comedy. Mr. Vaughn fast-talks and overshares his way through some moderately funny if not terribly original set pieces, including an embarrassing toast and a few energetic boardroom presentations. Mr. James, overshadowed by his partner’s larger frame and smaller superego, sneaks in a few double takes and Gleasonesque moves. Channing Tatum, looking positively petite in this company, contributes a raging freakout or two, and Queen Latifah is on hand to make sure that the pale males don’t monopolize the funny.

Mr. Vaughn and Mr. James play bulky best buds romantically paired (because they’re Not Gay) with pretty, fine-boned women. Mr. James is Nick, married to Geneva (Winona Ryder), and Mr. Vaughn is Ronny, gathering the nerve and the money to propose to his longtime girlfriend, Beth (Jennifer Connelly). To ask if Mr. Vaughn and Ms. Connelly have any chemistry is to invoke the wrong science; extreme disparities of size and shape suggest, instead, a fascinating problem of zoology, as if a whippet had decided to cohabit with a yak.

Ms. Connelly is sensitive and sympathetic, but Ronny and Beth’s relationship is, for most of the film, a peripheral concern. They have some trouble behind them — specifically Ronny’s gambling addiction, which he has kept in check for two years — but their issues are not what “The Dilemma” is about.

The pivot on which it turns, rather nimbly, from screwball to bawling and back again, is a sort-of-triangle involving Ronny, Nick and Geneva, who seems to be stepping out on her husband. At least that is what Ronny concludes when he spots her one afternoon kissing someone (Mr. Tatum) who is, judging from his tattoos and the muscles underneath them, definitely not Nick.

What is Ronny to do? He and Nick are not only friends but also business partners, working against deadline on a make-or-break project. (The client is Chrysler, for whom Nick and Ronny are designing an engine that combines fuel efficiency with muscle-car brawn and noise.) Ronny worries that his already stressed-out pal will be devastated by news of Geneva’s betrayal, and Geneva’s reaction when Ronny confronts her only complicates matters further.

Mr. Vaughn plays Ronny’s agonizing indecision perfectly, throwing his large body into remarkably subtle postures of anxiety and doubt. He also displays a curious sort of masochism, allowing himself to be pummeled, humiliated and bloodied over and over again, exactly until it isn’t funny anymore and then until, once again, it is. Ms. Ryder, playing the least sympathetic character with unflinching dignity and candor, is in many ways the reason “The Dilemma” works as well as it does. For his part Mr. Howard handles the transition from humor to heartbreak smoothly, so that when raw, intense emotions rise to the surface there is somewhere for them to go.

Not that “The Dilemma” is exactly “Blue Valentine.” But within its slick, cozy, commercial parameters it has an interestingly rough texture. There is some rangy alt-rock to go with the classic hits, and views of lived-in Chicago neighborhoods to offset the postcard-ready skyline shots. If the film never probes too deeply into the pain and frustration of Nick and Geneva’s marriage, that may be because it sees them almost entirely from Ronny’s perspective. Though he has feelings, he’s ultimately a pretty shallow guy.

And the movie is not all that deep, but it does go further than many of its kind in acknowledging the hurt and difficulty that are the deep wellsprings of any comedy worthy of the name. Which, to come full circle, is what “The Dilemma,” against all expectations, turns out to be.

“The Dilemma” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Sexual situations and punch-outs. In some cases, these amount to more or less the same thing.

THE DILEMMA

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Ron Howard; written by Allan Loeb; director of photography, Salvatore Totino; edited by Mike Hill and Dan Hanley; music by Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe; production design by Daniel Clancy; costumes by Daniel Orlandi; produced by Brian Grazer, Mr. Howard and Vince Vaughn; released by Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes.

WITH: Vince Vaughn (Ronny), Kevin James (Nick), Jennifer Connelly (Beth), Winona Ryder (Geneva), Channing Tatum (Zip) and Queen Latifah (Susan Warner).

A version of this review appeared in print on January 14, 2011, on page C1 of the New York edition.

Is Extreme Parenting Effective?

Introduction

Mark Weaver

All parents wish the best for their children. But how should they go about it?

The Wall Street Journal published an essay titled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” in which Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, argues that tough love is the key to raising successful children. Her parenting methods include never allowing her two daughters to "attend a sleepover, have a play date, be in a school play, complain about not being in a school play, watch TV or play computer games, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than an A."

These measures may strike most parents as extreme. Some commentators note that such an approach may come out of a perhaps naïve belief that parents can indeed have control over their children.

What are the effects of a parenting style that is so demanding? Does strict control of a child's life lead to greater success or can it be counterproductive?

Read the Discussion »

Debaters

Balancing Freedom With Discipline
Yan Sun
When the Goal Is Successful Kids
Hara Estroff Marano
The Power of Conviction
David Anderegg
Defining Success for Myself
Jennifer Cheng
When Parents Feel Out of Control
Karen Karbo
The Opposite of Extreme
Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer
We Are What We Know
Meredith F. Small

Banks Are Poised to Pay Dividends After 3-Year Gap

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and ERIC DASH

Published: January 13, 2011

REPRINTS

Investors in bank stocks are about to get a big cut of the profits again.

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A Dearth of Dividends

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Financial analysts say the nation’s largest banks are ready to begin restoring their dividends in the first half of the year, after a three-year pause to repair their damaged balance sheets. The reversal could put billions of dollars in the pockets of pension funds and retirees who had viewed bank shares as dependable sources of income.

Clues to how big a payout is in store could come as early as Friday, when JPMorgan Chaseannounces its 2010 financial performance, the first of many earnings reports to come over the next week from the likes of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachsand Wells Fargo.

If the big banks deliver a second straight year of rising profits, as many analysts expect, the conditions would be in place for regulators to approve dividend increases by as early as March.

As the financial crisis worsened in 2008 and 2009, all but a handful of financial institutions cut their once-lucrative dividends to just pennies a share, hurting ordinary investors who had come to see them as sources of income. JPMorgan, for example, now has a dividend of 20 cents a share annually, down from $1.52 before the crisis.

Over all, the financial sector of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index paid out $51 billion in dividends in 2007. By 2010, that figure had shrunk to $19 billion.

“It’s a significant milestone,” said Gerard Cassidy, a veteran bank analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “The return of dividends signals that the banks are back, and the Federal Reserve wants to inspire confidence in the marketplace so that banks lend more.”

The financial industry has returned to health much faster than expected, helped by an alphabet soup of federal aid programs totaling more than $3 trillion, ultralow interest rates and a surging stock market.

Banks are expected to record $70 billion in profits in 2010, according to Foresight Analytics, a financial research firm. That would be up from $12.5 billion in 2009 but remains about half the level reached in 2006, before the housing market collapsed and the financial system almost came undone.

The earnings reports for the fourth quarter of 2010 are also likely to show that corporate and consumer lending is starting to come back while losses on bad loans are continuing to ease.

Wall Street’s trading businesses are expected to turn in a strong performance because of an increase in deal-making activity late in the year.

This week the Federal Reserve began another round of so-called stress tests of the nation’s 19 largest banks, evaluating their ability to remain financially healthy in the face of a still-anemic economic recovery and tough new regulations that will cut deeply into revenues. Unlike the first round of tests, the findings this time will not be made public.

Before approving a dividend increase, regulators must sign off on a bank’s stress test and conclude that the bank can meet the higher capital requirements put in place by new international agreements and the recent overhaul of financial regulations in the United States. They also must have fully repaid any federal bailout funds they accepted at the height of the crisis.

While the return of dividends will be welcomed by ordinary investors, it remains a delicate issue for the banks as well as regulators and politicians in Washington, said Chris Kotowski, a bank analyst with Oppenheimer.

Many voters are still angry about the government-led bailout that rescued banks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. More recently, the return of bonuses on Wall Street has stirred outrage.

“It’s purely a matter of making it palatable to the public,” Mr. Kotowski said. “Banks are fully capable of doing it. But everyone’s afraid of headlines that say just two years after the bailout, the fat cats are getting dividends again.”

Partly as a result, he said, dividends will probably be restored in stages, and it could be take until the end of 2012 for them to return to historical norms.

For decades, shares of banks, along with utilities, were the favored choice of retirees and other conservative investors who looked forward to a steady payment each quarter.

That all changed when the financial crisis struck, forcing Citigroup to cut its dividend as it braced for a wave of huge losses tied to loan defaults.

Although the federal bailout program did not require banks to lower their dividends in most cases, regulators all but forced many banks into making cuts by insisting that they hold more capital in reserve to cushion against losses.

By the spring of 2009, several of the largest banks — including JPMorgan, Bank of America and Wells Fargo — cut their dividend to just pennies a share each quarter.

Just as the banks cut their dividends at different rates over the course of months, the timing of dividend increases will probably also vary widely across the industry. The strongest banks, including JPMorgan, State Street, U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo, should be in the first wave this spring, several analysts said.

For Bank of America and Citigroup, which continue to suffer steep losses on mortgages and consumer loans, the analysts said higher dividends probably would not come until later this year or early next year.

Several regional lenders, including Fifth Third Bank, KeyCorp, SunTrust and Regions Financial, are barred by regulators from raising their dividends. None of these banks have repaid their bailout money in full.

In particular, analysts and investors are eagerly anticipating what the chief executive of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, will say on the company’s earnings call on Friday, looking for any hint of the bank’s dividend plan. JPMorgan emerged from the financial crisis in far better shape than most of its rivals, and Mr. Dimon has been outspoken about his desire to raise his company’s payout.

“We’re going to be building up a lot of excess capital,” he said in a CNBC interview on Tuesday. “So, we would like to restart a dividend.”

Eventually, JPMorgan’s restored dividend could equal $1.50 a share annually, said Michael Scanlon, senior equity analyst with Manulife Asset Management in Boston. That would equal a yield of 3.3 percent based on its closing price of $44.45 on Thursday.

That would be up from 0.5 percent now. More important, it would catapult the yield on JPMorgan shares to far above the 2.26 percent yield on certificates of deposit, a popular vehicle for investors seeking income.

“It won’t come right out of the chute at that level,” Mr. Scanlon said. “But it’s definitely the end of a long drought.”