Guantánamo Update

Challenge: Approximately 250 detainees remain at Guantánamo. Given the lack of any agreement with Yemen, 40 percent of these are Yemenis. More than 60 are eligible for release but can’t be let loose because their home countries won’t take them. Perhaps 80 might be tried, but so far only 20 have been charged, and only two trials have been completed.

Long-term goal: Reshape the perception of the United States abroad as a country that prizes the rule of law and is far more humane in treating its enemies than they are.

Action now: Announce a date for closing Guantánamo. That will put pressure on the government to accelerate negotiations with Yemen and others about returning eligible detainees. It will also probably require preparing the way for some form of preventive detention, with judicial safeguards, for those detainees that can neither be tried nor released.

Global regulation in the economic crisis

Challenge: The economic crisis will put pressure on Europe in many ways, as open-source reporting makes clear. One dimension not yet well understood is that it is pushing countries there and around the world to re-regulate -- and own -- their banking systems as parts of financial bailouts. The largest European bailout came in mid-October, by six European countries and worth more than €1 trillion. Yet it was hardly a fully coordinated response. For instance, the French government planned to shore up the capital of France’s six main retail banks with a €10.5 billion bailout plan, in return for an agreement to increase the credit available to households, businesses, and local governments by 3 to 4 percent in 2009. The European Union first objected, arguing that the move would bolster the position of the banks themselves, not just offset the negatives of the financial crisis. Later, though, the EU agreed that up to €500,000 could be extended by states to a bank without EU approval. Germany’s second-largest bank, Commerzbank, received €8.2 billion in capital in the mid-October bailout and then another €10 billion in early January, a portion of which will be used to buy a 25 percent stake in the bank. For its part, Britain acquired a 43 percent stake in Lloyds-HBOS bank when its Treasury had to step in to buy shares that were not selling on the open market. The British government came to own two other banks, Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, outright.