Young Muk Jeon, "The Financial Crisis and Life Insurance Companies"

The global financial market clearly rebounded from the shock of the 2008 financial crisis.  However, recently the market volatility has grown due to oil price hikes, the European debt crisis and the anemic U.S. economic growth rate.  A series of financial institutions filed bankruptcies or were sold during the crisis.  However, life insurance companies fared relatively well in terms of financial difficulty.  In his research, Jeon explores the impact of the financial crisis on the life insurance industry and looks at what are the main reasons for the resilience of the life insurance sector.  Furthermore, Jeon presents what kind of strategic actions are needed for life insurers to weather the current turbulent climate.

Jong Jin Lee, "Corporate Communications:  Changing with the Media Environment"

Recent changes have occurred in the modes of communication prevalent in South Korea, a rapidly advancing society where newer varieties of interactive media have significantly displaced traditional print and broadcast media among the youngest and most well-educated segments of the population.  These changes have also had a profound impact on the quality of corporate communications to the public.  In his presentation, Lee will address both the advent of the “netizen” and the hotter media environment for today’s companies in South Korea.  Most critically, he will also discuss the evolution of corporate public relations responses to public perceptions and media depictions of crises, illustrating his narrative with striking examples from his own company’s history.

Japan Colloquium Series Inaugural Event  
 

Japan is facing a major set of challenges in the aftermath of its triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis. It had just begun recovering from the 2008 global financial crisis when the disasters hit. Richard Katz will discuss the economic and political prospects for Japan after this catastrophe in a broader global context. He will also be presenting lessons from Japan for U.S. policymakers fighting the current slump. 
 

Richard Katz is editor of the Oriental Economist Report, a monthly newsletter on Japan, as well as the semi-weekly TOE Alert e-mail service on Japan. He is also a special correspondent at Weekly Toyo Keizai, a leading Japanese business weekly. Katz is the author of two books on Japan. The first is Japan: The System That Soured--The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Economic Miracle (M.E. Sharpe,1998); it was published in a Japanese edition as Kusariyuku Nihon To Iu System (Toyo Keizai, 1999). His second book, entitled Japanese Phoenix: The Long Road to Economic Revival (M.E. Sharpe, 2002), was published in English, and in Japanese as Fushicho no Nikon Keizai (Toyo Keizai). Katz has taught about Japan as an adjunct professor in economics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and at the New York University Stern School of Business. He regularly writes op-eds for newspapers such as the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, as well as essays for a variety of journals, including the article “The Japan Fallacy?” for the March-April 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs. He has testified about in Japan in Congress on several occasions. Katz received his MA in economics from New York University in 1996.

In the last two decades there has been a sharp growth in the numbers of people that have been “expelled,” numbers far larger than the newly “incorporated” middle classes of countries such as India and China. I use the term “expulsion” to describe a diversity of conditions: the growing numbers of the abjectly poor, of the displaced in poor countries who are warehoused in formal and informal refugee camps, of the minoritized and persecuted in rich countries who are warehoused in prisons, of workers whose bodies are destroyed on the job and rendered useless at far too young an age, able-bodied surplus populations warehoused in ghettoes and slums. One major trend is the repositioning of what had been framed as sovereign territory, a complex conditions, into land for sale on the global market – land in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Central Asia and in Latin America to be bought by rich investors and rich governments to grow food, to access underground water tables, and to access minerals and metals. My argument is that these diverse and many other kindred developments amount to a logic of expulsion, signaling a deeper systemic transformation in advanced capitalism, one documented in bits and pieces but not quite narrated as an overarching dynamic that is taking us into a new phase of global capitalism. The paper is based on the author’s forthcoming book Expulsions.

Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (www.saskiasassen.com). Her recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press 2008), A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007), both translated into Spanish by Editorial Katz (Madrid y Buenos Aires), and the 4th fully updated edition of Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2012). Among older books is The Global City (Princeton University Press 1991/2001). Her books are translated into over 20 languages. She is the recipient of diverse awards and mentions, ranging from multiple doctor honoris causa to named lectures and being selected as one of the 100 Top Global Thinkers of 2011 by Foreign Policy Magazine.

Recommended readings:

• Sassen, Saskia(2010) 'A Savage Sorting of Winners and Losers: Contemporary Versions of Primitive Accumulation', Globalizations, 7: 1, 23 — 50
• Sassen, Saskia, "When the City Itself Becomes a Technology of War" in Theory, Culture & Society 2010, Vol. 27(6): 33-50 (A PDF of this document can be found below.)

Sponsored by The Europe Center, the Abassi Program in Islamic Studies, and the Mediterranean Studies Forum