Editor's Highlights | July 28th 2011

Editor's Highlights | July 28th 2011

Turning Japanese The brinkmanship in Washington over America's debt ceiling and the struggle to keep Greece in the euro zone are different in many ways, but they both show a frightening absence of leadership. At the moment the West's politicians are not willing to make tough choices; and everybody—the markets, the leaders of the emerging world, the banks, even the voters—knows it. In our cover leader we point to the worrying similarities with Japan, where two decades of political paralysis have done more harm than the economic excesses of the 1980s. Here are some other pieces from this week's issue you might also be interested in. You can read them at The Economist online using the links below.

This week's highlights Death and defiance in Norway And the debate about Islamophobia Read more Undiplomatic India Poor relations with its neighbours are holding back its global ambitions Read more China's emerging internet giants A fast-growing industry with distinctive Chinese characteristics Read more A quarter-century of Burgernomics Our competition to find the next quirky economic indicator Read more The naked world of Lucian Freud Our obituary of one of the world's greatest painters Read more