The Boss: A College President, Drawn to Uncertainties

My parents were in a mixed marriage: Dad was Irish Catholic; Mom was Irish Protestant. My mother was a voracious and indiscriminate reader and loved the tiny library in Paoli. My dad washed the dishes, ran the vacuum, played baseball and taught Sunday school; my mother earned more money than he did and balanced the checkbook. So rigid gender roles have always seemed a mere convention to me.

I graduated third in my high school class, yet the guidance counselors, who knew my family background, told us that we could only afford community college. I got into Duke on scholarships and loans. Both my parents’ places of work provided added funding.

When I decided to major in religious studies, my mother worried that I was trying to make her happy. I told her that I wasn’t sure I believed in religion but that I wanted to understand why others did. While envious of the certainty that some of my more religious friends experienced, I’ve been drawn to the greater challenge that uncertainty presents.

I came out as a lesbian in college. When Anita Bryant, who was known for her views against homosexuality, came to the South to speak, a group I was involved with staged a protest. When she said the word “homosexual,” our group got up and walked out in silence. People in the audience spat on us. These were middle- and working-class people whom I could have known from my own neighborhood. They were beyond rational discourse. This moment politicized me.

I also learned that universities are not immune to sexism or homophobia. In my first teaching job after earning a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago Divinity School, a student told me that a female teacher of biblical materials was “the devil incarnate.” Later, at another college where I taught, a colleague told me that I wouldn’t have been hired had it been known I was a lesbian.

At Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., which I joined in 1988 as assistant professor in the religious studies department, the attitudes were somewhat different. I designed and taught a course on AIDS and H.I.V. with David Craig, a chemistry professor. Our course won an award from the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

I worked at Hobart and William Smith as an educator and administrative leader for almost 25 years. I’m often asked why I left a secure position there a year ago to head up Shimer College, a relatively unknown school with 125 undergraduates. I suppose I liked its unofficial tagline: “Dangerously Optimistic Since 1853.”

More important, Shimer is based on the Great Books Program. We read texts in the natural and social sciences and the humanities that have enduring historical significance. By remaining intentionally small, we can model how to live in a participatory democracy.

The hardest part of my job is the commute. My partner, Betty Bayer, remains in Geneva as professor of women’s studies at Hobart and William Smith. We own a house there built in 1806; I take the train back East when I can.

Over the course of a lifetime, I have come to understand that I cannot pursue ideas alone. Nor can I strive to change the world unless I engage others, whether those who spit on me or those with whom I share my life. I still wrestle with the tensions of differences and uncertainty. As Shimerians say, we steer between reality and utopia.

Iran’s President Puts New Focus on the Economy

In an acknowledgment of the growing toll that international economic restrictions connected to Iran’s nuclear program are having on the population, both Mr. Rouhani and Ayatollah Khamenei made the economy a major theme of their remarks.

“People called for change and improvement in their living standards, they want to live better,” Mr. Rouhani said.

But he and the ayatollah offered somewhat different solutions. Whereas Mr. Rouhani said that interactions with the world, meaning talks with Europe and potentially the United States, were a way out of the crisis, Ayatollah Khamenei, who as supreme leader has final word on all important issues, expressed pessimism that such overtures would yield fruit. “Some of our enemies do not speak with our language of wisdom,” he said, urging self-sufficiency.

As Mr. Rouhani takes his public oath of office on Sunday, Iran’s growing economic crisis sits atop his agenda. Sanctions have slashed oil exports and limited Iran’s ability to transfer money from abroad. The shortage has been aggravated by the profligate spending that is a legacy of the departing government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

During most of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s two four-year terms, Iran enjoyed an oil windfall, with a flow of dollars and euros that fueled huge imports on goods ranging from ice cream to Porsches.

But now Mr. Rouhani’s aides describe Iran’s economic situation as the worst in decades. Many blame what they call Mr. Ahmadinejad’s erratic economic policies, punctuated by slashed subsidies and unbridled inflation.

The signs of woe abound.

Lacking money, Iran’s national soccer team scrapped a training trip to Portugal. Teachers in Tehran nervously awaited their wages, which were inexplicably delayed by more than a week. Officials warned recently that food and medicine imports have stalled for three weeks because of a lack of foreign currency.

While Mr. Rouhani has asked for a hundred days to review the state of the economy and devise solutions, there are some voices who now say that the only way to solve the economic ills is to come up with a political settlement of Iran’s nuclear dispute. Those voices were barely heard during Mr. Ahmadinejad’s tenure.

“Rouhani’s economic success depends on the determination of Iran’s other leaders to find a solution for the nuclear support,” an economics professor, Mohsen Renani of the University of Isfahan, told the Web site Neco News.

In another sign of dissatisfaction over the consequences of Iran’s nuclear stance, an influential political professor publicly expressed doubt recently over the benefits of the nuclear program. “Why are we producing radioisotopes when we can import them much cheaper?” the professor, Sadegh Zibakalam of Tehran University, told the reformist weekly Aseman. “Why should we maintain a nuclear program when we have no economic justification?”

While those voices may have grown louder, they by no means represent the official position of Iran’s ruling establishment, which maintains that self-sufficiency in nuclear energy is nonnegotiable.

“Whatever happens, our nuclear stances will not change nor waver,” Mohammad Taghi Rahbar, a former member of Parliament and an influential Friday Prayer leader in Isfahan, said in an interview. “Our supreme leader, the nation and all officials from all factions believe this is our inalienable right, so we will not retreat at all.”

But ignoring the increasing economic pressures, while promising a better future — a strategy favored by Iran’s leaders over the past years — is proving increasingly complicated. Almost everybody in Iran is feeling the pain.

Helen Thomas | 1920-2013: 50 Years of Tough Questions and ‘Thank You, Mr. President’

Her death was announced by the Gridiron Club, one of Washington’s leading news societies. Ms. Thomas was a past president of that organization.

Ms. Thomas covered every president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama for United Press International and, later, Hearst Newspapers. To her colleagues, she was the unofficial but undisputed head of the press corps — her status ratified by her signature line at the end of every White House news conference, “Thank you, Mr. President.”

Her blunt questions and sharp tone made her a familiar personality not only in the parochial world inside the Washington Beltway but also among television audiences across the country.

“Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism,” President Obama said in a statement on Saturday. “She never failed to keep presidents — myself included — on their toes.” 

Presidents grew to respect, even to like, Ms. Thomas for her forthrightness and stamina, which sustained her well after the age at which most people had settled into retirement. President Bill Clinton gave her a cake on Aug. 4, 1997, her 77th birthday. Twelve years later, President Obama gave her cupcakes for her 89th. At his first news conference in February 2009, Mr. Obama called on her, saying: “Helen, I’m excited. This is my inaugural moment.”

But 16 months later, Ms. Thomas abruptly announced her retirement from Hearst amid an uproar over her assertion that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back where they belonged, perhaps Germany or Poland. Her remarks, made almost offhandedly days earlier at a White House event, set off a storm when a videotape was posted.

In her retirement announcement, Ms. Thomas, whose parents immigrated to the United States from what is now Lebanon, said that she deeply regretted her remarks and that they did not reflect her “heartfelt belief” that peace would come to the Middle East only when all parties embraced “mutual respect and tolerance.”

“May that day come soon,” she said.

Ms. Thomas’s career bridged two eras, beginning during World War II when people got their news mostly from radio, newspapers and movie newsreels, and extending into the era of 24-hour information on cable television and the Internet. She resigned from U.P.I. on May 16, 2000, a day after it was taken over by an organization with links to the Unification Church.

Weeks later, Ms. Thomas was hired by Hearst to write a twice-weekly column on national issues. She spent the last 10 years of her working life there.

When Ms. Thomas took a job as a radio writer for United Press in 1943 (15 years before it merged with the International News Service to become U.P.I.), most female journalists wrote about social events and homemaking. The journalists who covered war, crime and politics, and congratulated one another over drinks at the press club were typically men.

She worked her way into full-time reporting and by the mid-1950s was covering federal agencies. She covered John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960, and when he won she became the first woman assigned to the White House full time by a news service.

Ms. Thomas was also the first woman to be elected an officer of the White House Correspondents’ Association and the first to serve as its president. In 1975, she became the first woman elected to the Gridiron Club, which for 90 years had been a men-only bastion of Washington journalists.

Ms. Thomas was known for her dawn-to-dark work hours, and she won her share of exclusives and near-exclusives. She was the only female print journalist to accompany President Richard M. Nixon on his breakthrough trip to China in 1972.

“Helen was a better reporter than she was a writer — but in her prime had more than her share of scoops the rest of us would try to match,” Mark Knoller, the longtime CBS News White House reporter, wrote in a Twitter message on Saturday morning.

And, he added, “Pity the poor WH press aide who would try to tell Helen, ‘You can’t stand there.’ ”

Mark Landler contributed reporting.

Helen Thomas | 1920-2013: 50 Years of Tough Questions and ‘Thank You, Mr. President’

Her death was announced by the Gridiron Club, one of Washington’s leading news societies. Ms. Thomas was a past president of that organization.

Ms. Thomas covered every president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama for United Press International and, later, Hearst Newspapers. To her colleagues, she was the unofficial but undisputed head of the press corps — her status ratified by her signature line at the end of every White House news conference, “Thank you, Mr. President.”

Her blunt questions and sharp tone made her a familiar personality not only in the parochial world inside the Washington Beltway but also among television audiences across the country.

“Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism,” President Obama said in a statement on Saturday. “She never failed to keep presidents — myself included — on their toes.” 

Presidents grew to respect, even to like, Ms. Thomas for her forthrightness and stamina, which sustained her well after the age at which most people had settled into retirement. President Bill Clinton gave her a cake on Aug. 4, 1997, her 77th birthday. Twelve years later, President Obama gave her cupcakes for her 89th. At his first news conference in February 2009, Mr. Obama called on her, saying: “Helen, I’m excited. This is my inaugural moment.”

But 16 months later, Ms. Thomas abruptly announced her retirement from Hearst amid an uproar over her assertion that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back where they belonged, perhaps Germany or Poland. Her remarks, made almost offhandedly days earlier at a White House event, set off a storm when a videotape was posted.

In her retirement announcement, Ms. Thomas, whose parents immigrated to the United States from what is now Lebanon, said that she deeply regretted her remarks and that they did not reflect her “heartfelt belief” that peace would come to the Middle East only when all parties embraced “mutual respect and tolerance.”

“May that day come soon,” she said.

Ms. Thomas’s career bridged two eras, beginning during World War II when people got their news mostly from radio, newspapers and movie newsreels, and extending into the era of 24-hour information on cable television and the Internet. She resigned from U.P.I. on May 16, 2000, a day after it was taken over by an organization with links to the Unification Church.

Weeks later, Ms. Thomas was hired by Hearst to write a twice-weekly column on national issues. She spent the last 10 years of her working life there.

When Ms. Thomas took a job as a radio writer for United Press in 1943 (15 years before it merged with the International News Service to become U.P.I.), most female journalists wrote about social events and homemaking. The journalists who covered war, crime and politics, and congratulated one another over drinks at the press club were typically men.

She worked her way into full-time reporting and by the mid-1950s was covering federal agencies. She covered John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960, and when he won she became the first woman assigned to the White House full time by a news service.

Ms. Thomas was also the first woman to be elected an officer of the White House Correspondents’ Association and the first to serve as its president. In 1975, she became the first woman elected to the Gridiron Club, which for 90 years had been a men-only bastion of Washington journalists.

Ms. Thomas was known for her dawn-to-dark work hours, and she won her share of exclusives and near-exclusives. She was the only female print journalist to accompany President Richard M. Nixon on his breakthrough trip to China in 1972.

“Helen was a better reporter than she was a writer — but in her prime had more than her share of scoops the rest of us would try to match,” Mark Knoller, the longtime CBS News White House reporter, wrote in a Twitter message on Saturday morning.

And, he added, “Pity the poor WH press aide who would try to tell Helen, ‘You can’t stand there.’ ”

Mark Landler contributed reporting.

Douglas J. Dayton, First President of Target, Dies at 88

The cause was cancer, his family said.

Mr. Dayton was one of six grandsons who went into the family business started by George D. Dayton, a New York banker and real estate investor. George Dayton moved to Minnesota in 1881 and by 1903 had established the Dayton Dry Goods Company.

Six decades later, after the dry goods store became a department store called the Dayton Company with locations around the Twin Cities, Douglas Dayton was made president of the company’s new subsidiary, a discount chain.

In May 1961, a year before the first Target store opened in Roseville, Minn., Mr. Douglas told The Minneapolis Tribune that the company would “combine the best of the fashion world with the best of the discount world, a quality store with quality merchandise at discount prices.”

By the next year, customers in Duluth were so impressed that they began calling their store “Tarzhay.” Mr. Dayton soon boasted to his skeptical brothers that Target would become a $100 million business.

It did in 1968. By 1975, Target had become the family company’s top revenue producer. By the late 1970s, its revenue exceeded $1 billion.

Even when competitors like Kmart initially grew at a faster rate, Mr. Dayton expressed confidence in Target’s strategy.

“I am thoroughly convinced that we are selling a superior product that will bear the test of time,” he told other executives in 1968, according to “On Target: How the World’s Hottest Retailer Hit a Bull’s-Eye,” a 2003 book by Laura Rowley.

Mr. Dayton left Target in 1968 to become vice president of the parent company, which had been renamed the Dayton-Hudson Corporation after a merger with another department store chain. By the late 1970s, most of the Dayton family members had given up their management positions. Douglas Dayton left the company in 1972. From 1974 to 1994 he ran a venture capital firm, Dade Development Capital.

In Target’s early years, Mr. Dayton worked closely with another executive, John F. Geisse. In 1982, Mr. Geisse helped found another discounter, the Wholesale Club, which later merged with the Sam’s Club division of Wal-Mart.

Douglas James Dayton was born on Dec. 2, 1924, in Minneapolis, the youngest of five brothers. His father, George N. Dayton, became president of the family business in 1938. Douglas Dayton graduated from the Blake School and attended Amherst College before joining the Army in 1943.

His survivors include his wife, Wendy; three sons, David, Steve and Bruce; a stepdaughter, Elizabeth; six grandchildren; and a brother, Bruce, who served on the board of Target until 1983.

Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota is Douglas Dayton’s nephew.

Corner Office: Tequila Avión’s President, on Letting Workers Find a Path

Q. What were some early lessons for you?

A. When I was younger, we lived for many years in a little Eskimo village in Alaska. My father was a rural doctor for the Indian Health Service. He would fly from village to village, and my mother, brother and me would sometimes go with him. We would land in a village, and all the little kids would gather around. While he was treating people, the kids would take us and we’d go play. I learned to connect with people early on.

Q. How did your parents influence you?

A. My father really trusted people and believed in humankind. That’s something that’s stuck with me, and it’s also the way I try to manage people. My mother was always a teacher, wherever in the world we were living — in Oregon or Alaska or Africa. We had this whale vertebra in our house, and if I had something to present at school the next day, my mother would make me stand on top of this big bone and recite it. She would say, “Just speak your piece, and make me feel some emotion.” It really helped in life because you learn how to connect with your audience and be more articulate speaking in public.

Q. Any managers you’ve had who influenced you?

A. One of them had this belief in people — that you can do more than you think you can. To me, that’s so powerful. If you believe in someone, even more than they believe in themselves, they will do anything to succeed. They will do everything they can not to let you down.

Q. How would you describe your leadership style today?

A. My approach is to give people a lot of autonomy. You have to know your vision, share your vision with people and make sure they’re crystal clear about it and buy into it. But even more important than that is to make sure they know what it is they specifically have to do make that vision happen. I think managers too often talk about their vision but everyone else in the business doesn’t know what it means for them individually. What should they be getting up and doing every day? And how important is what you do to that overall vision?

As a younger manager, I was too prescriptive. I told people exactly what I wanted them to do. That really just doesn’t work. People may not do things the way I want them to, but you have to step back and realize that people achieve things in different ways. So I try to take a step back and say: “Here’s what we’re going for. Just go and do it.” If I do that, more times than not the person will do much more than I expected, or they’ll figure out a much better way to get it done.

Q. Other mentors who had a big impact?

A. The boss who hired me at LVMH was a great mentor. You could go into his office early in the morning and just have a conversation. I had no idea what I was doing, but I would show up early and sit down and say, “O.K., here’s the challenge I’m having.” He would always ask, “So what do you think you should do?” And that’s something I always try to remind myself to do with others, to always ask that question before I say, “Here’s what I think you should do.”

He’s also the one who taught me the importance of not only having a vision, but also making sure that every single employee knows what they should be doing. We would all sit down, every single employee, and write that on paper once a year — here my boss’s vision, here’s my vision; here’s my boss’s goal, and here’s my goal, and here are all the things I need to achieve this year to make that happen.

Q. How do you hire?

A. It’s a huge challenge, especially for a start-up. You try to understand if the person has the passion and the energy. And if they’re coming from corporate America, can they really make that jump to a start-up? It’s a large jump, and not everyone can make it. One of the things I look for is, do they love what they do now? I believe in hiring people who just really enjoy what they’re doing.

That may sound sort of counterintuitive, because they have to want to leave for a reason. But I think it’s so much about attitude. If they love what they’re doing, then they can really spread it to everyone around them, inside and outside the company.

One good question I ask is, “What did you do the summer of your sophomore college year?” I find the answers really interesting. Did they travel? Maybe they rolled up their sleeves and worked. You learn what their value systems were early on.

Q. And what were you doing that summer?

A. I organized a tennis tournament called World Team Tennis with all these famous athletes. I learned a lot. And in the evenings, I was managing a restaurant.

Q. Other questions you ask?

A. What do you do when you fail? People who are successful fail a lot. So I will ask, “Tell me an example of something that you thought was a great idea and why it didn’t work.” The idea doesn’t make a difference. But what did they learn about why they failed? If you have someone who’s failed and thought about why they failed, then that’s going to be a really strong employee for you.

Q. Are there certain behaviors you have a particularly low tolerance for?

A. It’s a huge pet peeve for me when people start speaking and it takes them a while to get to the point. So now I draw a triangle for my team and point to the top, and I’ll say, “Give me the main point up here, and if I want the rest, I’ll ask.” I just can’t sit there and listen without knowing what you’re trying to tell me.

Q. What advice would you give to graduating business-school students?

A. I would tell them to take a job not based on the title or even what they’re going to do. Take it because of the people you’re going to work for. It was great advice for me, and has helped guide my career. I learned so much more just because of the people.

Italian Lawmakers, After Stalemate, Re-elect President to Second Term

The move raised the possibility that Mr. Napolitano, 87, could preside over the creation of a broad-based coalition after national elections in February split Parliament into three intractable factions and failed to yield a government even as Italy’s economy, the third-largest in the euro zone, continued to stumble.

The election of Mr. Napolitano, supported by both the main center-left and center-right parties, suggested that the two sides would now be more willing to negotiate the formation of a government. But it also infuriated the anti-establishment Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo, which won a quarter of the recent parliamentary vote.

While he cannot prevent a grand coalition, one including both major parties, from forming, Mr. Grillo could complicate matters by stirring renewed anger against the old political establishment, which is in upheaval.

After Mr. Grillo called on his supporters to take to the streets, hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Parliament building, many holding placards in support of Five Star’s candidate, Stefano Rodotà, a legal expert and former leader of the center-left, which nonetheless did not back him. Mr. Rodotà is “not part of the old guard,” said one protester, Anna Maria Vatrella, an unemployed social worker. “All the left knows how to do is to hold on to the power they have. They have no interest in change. They have no idea what it means to live as normal people do.”

Mr. Napolitano’s current seven-year term is up in May. Lawmakers on Saturday implored him to run for president after failing to agree on a candidate acceptable to a majority of Parliament in two days of voting, and after the implosion on Friday of the center-left Democratic Party.

“I cannot dismiss my responsibility toward the nation,” Mr. Napolitano said before the vote, which made him the first second-term president in Italy’s 67-year-old republic. He added that he expected the political parties that had called on him to show “a corresponding sense of responsibility.”

“We must look at the difficult situation of the country, the problems of Italy and Italians and the image and the institutional role of this country in the world,” he said in a televised statement after the vote and a meeting with the presidents of the lower house and the Senate.

Although a testament to the respect he commands among all parties, Mr. Napolitano’s re-election was a controversial solution that underscored the profound difficulties that Italy’s established parties face in adapting to new economic and social realities.

It was “not a sign of health of the Italian political system, even if the effect could be positive,” said Antonio Polito, a political commentator. “Our system is no longer able to produce a stable government. The parliamentary system is broken, and it has not been able to fix itself.”

Mr. Napolitano said in his statement that a possible government had not been discussed, but political analysts said a grand coalition was likely. Such a government is most likely to exist as long as it takes to push through urgent economic measures and some critical reforms, including a new electoral law.

If the currently antagonistic parties do not come together, Mr. Napolitano could also dissolve Parliament and call a vote, though analysts said that was less likely because new elections would probably produce a similar result unless the electoral law was changed.

In November 2011, Mr. Napolitano helped orchestrate the rise to power of the current caretaker prime minister, Mario Monti, after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi stepped down during a period of intense market turmoil. Mr. Monti’s yearlong technocratic government ended in December when Mr. Berlusconi’s party withdrew support.

In the February elections, the Democratic Party won a majority in the lower house but not in the Senate, and its leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, rejected Mr. Berlusconi’s proposal for a grand coalition.

Elisabetta Povoledo reported from Rome, and Rachel Donadio from Athens.

U.S. Treasury Secretary and Chinese President Meet

Mr. Lew, 57, a master of the intricacies of the United States budget who has less foreign experience than his predecessors, raised the topic of cybersecurity, a significant issue in the relationship between Washington and Beijing, American officials said. He also talked about North Korea’s nuclear program, a topic not normally on a Treasury secretary’s agenda, they said.

Mr. Xi noted that while the United States and China had “enormous shared interests, of course, unavoidably we have some differences.”

It has been unusual for Chinese leaders to draw attention to stark divisions with the United States. Mr. Xi’s choice of words showed confidence that he could manage the problems, and hinted at a lowering of expectations about developing a strategic relationship with the United States, an idea that had been proffered in the past, diplomats here said.

Contacts between Washington and Beijing have been sparse during China’s protracted political transition over the past three months. It began in November when Mr. Xi took over as head of the Communist Party, and ended last week with his ascension to the presidency at the annual session of the National People’s Congress.

For reasons of protocol, President Obama did not speak with Mr. Xi until last week, when he called the new Chinese president to congratulate him and to outline the issues at hand, including North Korea and cybersecurity.

The White House has directly accused China of widespread theft of data from American computer networks, including those of American businesses involved in the Chinese market. China’s cyberespionage against American commercial interests has attracted strong attention in Congress that could have negative consequences for China, analysts said.

“If we don’t see progress, that could increase the prospects for a political backlash that would lead to greater scrutiny of Chinese investment in the United States,” said Myron A. Brilliant, executive vice president and head of international affairs at the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

On North Korea, the Obama administration wants to know whether Beijing will enforce the new sanctions that the United Nations Security Council imposed on the North, with China voting in favor. The administration has also announced an expansion of missile defense capabilities in an effort to deter North Korea, a message that implied that China should restrain its nuclear-armed ally or face an expanding American military focus on Asia.

Mr. Xi appeared to have gone out of his way to meet Mr. Lew before leaving Friday for his first foreign trip as president, which is to include two days in Moscow, followed by a three-nation tour of Africa. Mr. Lew is the first foreign official Mr. Xi has met as president, and Mr. Xi endowed some meaning to his phrase to Mr. Lew that he attached “great importance” to the relationship between China and the United States.

At the same time, however, Chinese commentators have noted that Secretary of State John Kerry chose to make his first trip abroad an extended journey to Europe and the Middle East, unlike his predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who visited Asian nations first, including China. Mr. Kerry is expected to be in China next month as part of an Asian tour, administration officials said.

This trip is Mr. Lew’s first to China, according to administration officials. The previous two Treasury secretaries, Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Timothy F. Geithner, were experts on China, and for the past seven years they played dominant roles in the relationship between the countries.

Mr. Lew arrived in Beijing on Tuesday morning and went almost immediately to the Great Hall of the People. He was accompanied by Lael Brainard, under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs, and Evan Medeiros, a senior official of the National Security Council who specializes in China.

As Mr. Lew and Mr. Xi sat side by side in large, white-upholstered armchairs, Mr. Lew stressed in brief comments overheard by reporters that the United States had seen 14 quarters of economic growth, that the housing market was “coming back,” and that a “revolution” was under way in the energy sector, a reference to shale gas production. After that, reporters were ushered out.

The meeting lasted about 45 minutes, according to Mr. Lew’s aides. The secretary stressed the need for a relationship marked by “healthy competition rather than strategic rivalry,” a Treasury Department statement said.

Later, Mr. Lew met with Xu Shaoshi, the new chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, the powerful agency that manages the domestic economy. He was scheduled to have dinner with the new finance minister, Lou Jiwei, and Wednesday he is to meet with China’s new prime minister, Li Keqiang.

For his first lunch in China, Mr. Lew repaired to the Bao Yuan Dumpling House, an informal restaurant with laminated tabletops close to the United States Embassy.

There, with two staff members, he ate a variety of house specialties, using chopsticks. The bill: 109 renminbi, or roughly $6 a person.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a senior official of the National Security Council. He is Evan Medeiros, not Madeiros.

Lackawanna President Judge Appears Before Federal Grand Jury

Lackawanna County President Judge Thomas J. Munley testified before a federal grand jury Tuesday, according to sources in the legal community.

Bundesbank President Says France Needs to Control Its Deficit

FRANKFURT — The head of the German central bank said Monday that France should not give up trying to bring its government deficit below 3 percent of gross domestic product, adding to the criticism being heaped on President François Hollande of France from abroad.

Jens Weidmann, president of the Bundesbank, cloaked his rebuke in the language of French-German solidarity and was considerably more diplomatic than Maurice M. Taylor Jr., the head of the American tire maker Titan International, who sparked a furor last week when he told the French industry minister that French workers were lazy.

Still, Mr. Weidmann was the latest prominent person to lecture the increasingly defensive French on how they should manage their economy.

Speaking in Paris at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales, a leading business school, Mr. Weidmann noted that unemployment in France was above 10 percent while France’s share of world exports had declined by 25 percent since the euro made its debut. Total government debt “has reached a level that could potentially hurt growth,” Mr. Weidmann said.

France would undermine confidence in its prospects if it delayed efforts to control deficit spending, he said.

“Putting consolidation off would just shift the problem into the future,” Mr. Weidmann said, according to an advanced text of his remarks. “It would buy time but in so doing also worsen matters today as there is the risk that trust in public finances would erode even more.”

The tone of Mr. Weidmann’s speech was polite and even included a joke at Germany’s expense. (“How many Germans do you need to change a light bulb? One: he holds the light bulb, and the rest of Europe revolves around him.”)

Mr. Weidmann invoked the durable, if sometimes contentious, relationship between France and Germany, which has always been crucial to the functioning of the European Union. “Only together can France and Germany solve the current crisis,” he said.

But he said that the largest countries in the European monetary union had a responsibility to set an example for other members. “It is in my view particularly important for the heavyweights in E.M.U. to give clear signals,” he said.

France’s government budget deficit will be 3.7 percent of gross domestic product this year, while Germany will have a slight surplus, the European Commission forecast last week. When European countries formed a common currency, they agreed to keep their deficits below 3 percent of G.D.P., though the target has often been breached.

Mr. Weidmann acknowledged that budget austerity might hurt growth but said countries had no choice. “It is important that governments adhere to the consolidation plans they announced,” he said. “This will inspire confidence, which is an important prerequisite for the economy to grow.”

He rejected suggestions by Christine Lagarde, president of the International Monetary Fund and the former economics minister of France, that Germany should somehow become less competitive to give other countries a chance.

“The deficit countries must act,” Mr. Weidmann said. “They must address their structural weaknesses. They must become more competitive, and they must increase their exports.”

President Lincoln's Lessons for General Counsel

President Abraham Lincoln
Photo: Alexander Gardner, Nov. 8 1863, via Wikimedia Commons

The smart money predicts that the film Lincoln will sweep the Oscars. Where Hollywood goes, so will go the nation. Here are six lessons general counsel can learn from the 16th president.

No. 1: Mission over ego. Necessity, not vanity, drove Lincoln's decision-making during the Civil War. Check out this dramatic passage from David Von Drehle's book, Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America's Most Perilous Year. General George B. McClellan commanded the Union's Army of the Potomac. He was young, arrogant and disrespectful to the president. Once, he even insulted Lincoln and an aide by leaving them, unacknowledged, in his living room, while striding past them to his upstairs bedroom for the night.

"The unpardonable arrogance of the epaulets," fumed the assistant. Lincoln quietly replied, "This is not the time to be making points of etiquette and personal dignity."

Simply put, Lincoln needed McClellan to organize an army that was, in Lincoln's view, "utterly demoralized." Von Drehle writes of Lincoln's shrewd assessment: "McClellan has the army with him … [and] we must use the tools we have; he excels in making others ready to fight."

Remember, when in doubt, dial back ego.

No. 2: Salvage if possible; fire when necessary. McClellan invaded Virginia in a brilliant amphibious landing, just like General Douglas MacArthur at Inchon, South Korea, but without any follow-up. McClellan implored Lincoln for unneeded reinforcements. While frustrated, Lincoln understood this: Firing someone is easy, but replacing him is harder.

Lincoln wrote to McClellan on April 9, 1862. Von Drehle quotes the letter: "It is the precise time to strike a blow. … I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness. But you must act." Von Drehle writes that this was Lincoln at his best, "combining force with sympathy."

It is a template of an effective memo to a subordinate or an outside firm: Question assumptions. Provide rationales. Explain the peril. Show empathy. End with direction. Once Lincoln had a more powerful political footing, he cashiered McClellan. But he tried.

No. 3: Acknowledge mistakes. Want the respect of subordinates? Seneca called loyalty, not obedience, "the holiest virtue in the human heart." Lincoln illuminates the way. And there is no better example than that laid out by the great historian James M. McPherson in Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.

In July 1863, Lincoln was frustrated by Ulysses S. Grant's inability to conquer Vicksburg, a fortress of the Confederacy sitting atop the Mississippi, and openly questioned his strategy. Grant acted as his lights dictate and Vicksburg fell.

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Central Bank Actions Have ‘Alleviated Tensions’ in Euro Zone, President Says

“So, not bad,” Mario Draghi said, with an air of distinct satisfaction, at a press conference in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana following a meeting of the bank’s governing council.

But, perhaps wary of seeming too optimistic and encouraging complacency by elected officials, he added that the state of the euro zone remained tenuous. Early this year, Mr. Draghi also called a turning point in the crisis, only to see tensions return with a vengeance later on.

After a period of intense activity to calm the euro zone crisis, the E.C.B. had not been expected to announce major new policy actions Thursday. And, as expected, the bank left its benchmark interest rate at a record-low 0.75 percent.

Instead, the focus has been on elected leaders, and particularly whether Spain will meet conditions for the E.C.B. to start buying its bonds as a way of restarting bank lending in the country.

Mr. Draghi asserted that the E.C.B.’s promise to buy bonds in so-called Outright Monetary Transactions had “helped to alleviate tensions” in the markets.

He added that the bond purchases, once they begin, “will enable us to provide, under appropriate conditions, a fully effective backstop to avoid destructive scenarios with potentially severe challenges for price stability in the euro area.”

But he also called on governments to do their part to continue to make progress on overhauls of national economies and the structure of the euro zone.

And he warned that, if the E.C.B. began buying bonds to help a euro zone country hold down borrowing costs, the bank would cut off aid if countries failed to meet agreed conditions.

Last month, Mr. Draghi set out the terms for the central bank to begin buying euro zone government bonds. One of the conditions was that countries must request help from the euro zone bailout fund. Until Spain takes that step, the E.C.B. is not likely to take action.

The E.C.B. promise last month to intervene in bond markets, as well as Mr. Draghi’s vow to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro, has calmed tensions considerably. But market interest rates for Spanish bonds have been creeping higher in recent weeks as Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy delays asking for relief, a move which would require him to accept restrictions on how he manages the economy.

On Thursday, the Spanish Treasury successfully auctioned €4 billion of debt, the maximum amount that it had aimed to sell, amid strong demand and paying lower interest rates than when it last sold such bonds.

Analysts cautioned, however, into reading too much into the positive result.

Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy, a research concern, wrote Thursday in a note that investors were “taking an overly optimistic view” of the eventual effectiveness of the E.C.B. bond-buying program.

“Spain’s debt market is currently in a state of limbo,” he wrote. “It is being propped up by an E.C.B.-backed bond-buying scheme that has yet to be put into practice.”

In his remarks Thursday, Mr. Draghi presented a somewhat rosier picture of the situation in the euro zone, saying that “significant progress” has been made in countries like Spain and Portugal. He also noted that weaker banks in the euro zone had bolstered their capital cushions.

“When I said there has been significant progress, I included the repairing of the banking system,” Mr. Draghi said. “The capitalization gap that was pretty wide a couple of years ago has been significantly reduced.”

Mr. Draghi ticked off a number of signs that the crisis has eased, including inflows of bank deposits to Italy and a rise in bond sales by banks and corporations, which should help investment and lending. He also said that Spanish banks had become less dependent on lending from the E.C.B., a possible sign they are able to raise funds on markets.

But he added, “We also have to express a note of caution. Volatility is still relatively high. And governments will have to persevere on their reform action.”

Mr. Draghi also reiterated his view, which some euro countries have questioned, that the central bank’s actions to shore up the euro fall squarely within its purview.

“Let me repeat again what I have said in past months,” he said. “We are strictly within our mandate to provide price stability over the medium term, we act independently in determining monetary policy, and the euro is irreversible.”

From the E.C.B.’s point of view, there would have been little point in further cutting the main interest rate from 0.75 percent. Rates are already probably too low for stronger countries like Germany, while the official rate is no longer having much effect on borrowing costs for business and consumers in the troubled countries.

In addition, a rate cut now would have left the E.C.B. with few policy options if the situation in the euro zone deteriorates further.

“While a rate cut could easily be justified by the economic outlook,” analysts at ING wrote in a note Wednesday, “we think that the E.C.B. is not yet willing to fire this very last shot.”

Raphael Minder contributed reporting from Madrid.