1. Voter Anger Sweeps Europe
The Wall Street Journal May 06, 2012
PARIS—French voters elected Socialist Party candidate François Hollande as president Sunday, choosing a national leader who has pledged to shift the burden of economic hardship onto the rich and to resolve the protracted euro sovereign-debt crisis by softening the current prescription of austerity.
With his victory over conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in the second and final round of voting, Mr. Hollande—France's first Socialist president in 17 years—won a mandate to challenge German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has imposed spending cuts as the main remedy to repair the public finances of heavily indebted European countries.
Mr. Hollande's first steps will have big implications. Both recession and unemployment are spreading across the 17-country monetary union, fueling doubts among voters, politicians and economists about the wisdom of slashing public spending in a downturn, which Ms. Merkel and others say is necessary to restore confidence in euro-zone public finances.
The growing malaise was also reflected Sunday in Greece, where voters delivered a stinging rejection of the two incumbent parties, with many people casting ballots for smaller, far-left and far-right parties.
2. The Trust Molecule
The Wall Street Journal April 27, 2012
Why are some of us caring and some of us cruel, some generous and some greedy? Paul J. Zakon the new science of morality— and how it could be used to create a more virtuous society.
Why are some people trustworthy, while others lie, cheat and steal? Part of the answer may reside in a hormone called oxytocin. Claremont Graduate University's Paul Zak talks with WSJ's Gary Rosen about how a "vampire wedding" helped him understand how this chemical works to control trust, empathy and virtue.
Research that I have done over the past decade suggests that a chemical messenger called oxytocin accounts for why some people give freely of themselves and others are coldhearted louts, why some people cheat and steal and others you can trust with your life, why some husbands are more faithful than others, and why women tend to be nicer and more generous than men. In our blood and in the brain, oxytocin appears to be the chemical elixir that creates bonds of trust not just in our intimate relationships but also in our business dealings, in politics and in society at large.
To trigger this "moral molecule," all you have to do is give someone a sign of trust. When one person extends himself to another in a trusting way—by, say, giving money—the person being trusted experiences a surge in oxytocin that makes her less likely to hold back and less likely to cheat. Which is another way of saying that the feeling of being trusted makes a person more…trustworthy. Which, over time, makes other people more inclined to trust, which in turn…
3. Samsung Heirs Stage a Korean Soap Opera
New York Times April 24, 2012
SEOUL — Lee Kun-hee, the chairman of the largest South Korean business conglomerate, Samsung, and the country’s richest man, is not known for being talkative. Partly because of his reticence, what few public remarks he makes are studied by his reverential employees with the same zeal that devout Christians might apply when parsing biblical quotations.
These days, however, Mr. Lee, 70 — perhaps the country’s most exalted business leader — is displaying a wholly different side, allowing himself to be caught up in a spectacular, all-too-public squabble with his elder brother and a sister over the fortune amassed by their father, the late Samsung founder, Lee Byung-chull.
On Monday, the elder brother, Lee Maeng-hee, called his younger brother “childish” and “greedy.” On Tuesday, the Samsung chairman said of his brother: “He says with his own mouth that he is the eldest son of our family, but no one in our family, including myself, regards him as such. In fact, I have never seen him showing up for the family ritual for our father’s anniversary.”
That is about the worst thing one can say publicly about a son, particularly the eldest son, of a Korean family in this Confucian society, where the annual rite for deceased ancestors is considered to be the most sacred duty of children.
“These guys are better than Korean soap operas,” Tom Coyner, a management consultant based in Seoul who is the author of “Doing Business in Korea,” said of the gossip the family feud has inspired.
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