To an extent not often appreciated by outsiders, the lessons provided by that experience — with the nation pouring $2 trillion or more into the east, by some estimates, to little immediate benefit — color the outlook and decisions of policy makers and the attitudes of voters, a majority of whom would like to see Greece leave the euro zone, polls show. Most economists agree that Germany could do more to help revive growth throughout the euro zone, and there are reports that Chancellor Angela Merkel is preparing to propose a major European Union plan to accomplish that. But the German reluctance to underwrite the economies of Greece and other struggling countries is not just a matter of the parsimonious Germans hoarding their funds, as it is so often portrayed, but a sense that subsidies do not breed successful economies. “Money alone doesn’t help,” said Simon Huber, 44, out for a stroll recently near Sendlinger Gate here. “You’re only saved when you save yourself.” Though regularly lectured by their colleagues across the Atlantic about the need for stimulus measures to reverse the sagging fortunes of countries like Greece and Portugal, German experts believe they have a lot more experience trying to revive uncompetitive economies locked in currency regimes after nearly 23 years of dealing with the former East Germany. “We performed a real-life experiment,” said Hans-Werner Sinn, president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research here. While unemployment in the former West Germany is 6 percent, it remains stubbornly higher, at 11.2 percent, in the east. In 2010 gross domestic product per capita was more than $40,000 in the former West and just under $30,000 in the former East, compared with 1991 figures of $27,500 in the West and about $12,000 in the East. But much of the narrowing in the gaps between east and west, experts say, is attributed to the migration of job seekers westward as much as to any significant improvement in the east. There have been success stories in the revival of cities like Dresden and Leipzig, and some regions, especially on the southern edge of the former East Germany, are doing better. But the eastern part of the country today is known for perfectly rebuilt town squares that sit empty for much of the day and new stretches of autobahn with few drivers on them. “Germany made huge investments in infrastructure in East Germany,” said Klaus Adam, a professor of economics at the University of Mannheim. “The hope that the rest would follow has not been fulfilled. You need to get the productivity figures up.” While much of Europe follows the lead of President François Hollande of France in calling for jointly issued debt, or euro bonds, as the solution to Europe’s troubles, a vast majority of Germans reject the idea. To German ears, the demand for euro bonds sounds less like a technical solution to the crisis than a way to use Germany’s good credit rating to push off difficult but necessary reforms. “You don’t entrust your credit cards to anyone if you can’t control the spending,” said Jens Weidmann, president of the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, in an interview Friday with the French newspaper Le Monde. “Pooling debt is not the right tool for growth,” said Mr. Weidmann, a former economic adviser to Chancellor Merkel. “This would pose both legal and economic problems. I don’t think we’ll be successful in trying to resolve the debt crisis with more debt outside the regular budgets.” Ms. Merkel dominated the political decision-making in Europe for much of the crisis, culminating in the signing in March of the fiscal pact to reduce budget deficits by 25 of the 27 European Union countries. But countries like Greece and Spain have underperformed economically and been unable to rein in their deficits as quickly as promised. 1 2 NEXT PAGE » Jack Ewing contributed reporting from Frankfurt.
GR:FS adopts a close up third-person perspective, but plays very much like an FPS, packed with in-your-face action right from the offset – something that might surprise fans of the series. With four acts – set in Africa, Pakistan, Russia and Norway – GR:FS fits so much into its generic 14-mission campaign it can feel a bit rushed. There are obvious debts to Crysis 2 and Deus Ex, particularly with futuristic gear such as the camoflage suit offering ghostly protection provided you don't move too fast or fire a weapon. But some ideas are both original and superbly realised. Take the Sync Shot, where you can paint up to four targets for team mates to establish line of sight for a coordinated kill. It's a great idea that's bound to be copied by others, as will some of the gadgets. From the brilliant Warhound mobile artillery platform that launches mortars or sidewinder missiles according to remote commands, to the portable UAV's that hover above the battlefield picking out targets, GR:FS has the kind of gadgets James Bond would kill for. And although we're used to seeing intelligent HUDs these days, GR:FS has one of the best – including a super sharp Magnetic View mode, which picks out armed enemies and other metal objects such as landmines. GR:FS also keeps the gun club happy with a massive selection of more than 50 weapons – each of which can be customised – in seven categories with more than 600 separate components. From sniper scopes to armour-piercing rounds, custom stocks and retractable undercarriages, there are so many choices it's tempting to keep replaying levels until you find your ultimate combo. It's fun to play too, with a learning curve that tempts you with new gadgets every few levels and some decent squad AI to back you up. And although making progress is heavily geared towards finding and taking cover, it makes this easier with a cover-dash command that lets you sprint between them by holding down the X key. However, there are some problems. For starters, the engine is far better at depicting gizmos than environments, with largely flat textures, cramped locations and occasional graphical glitches throughout – even in cutscenes. It's also ironic that most of the eye-catching moments – the sandstorms and blizzards or the way the screen shakes when under suppressing fire – are also ones that reduce your visibility to near zero. GR:FS is also very linear, with each level providing a single objective and only additional challenges for, say for killing 15 enemies in Magnetic mode. Admittedly, giving total player freedom would undermine the squad-based ethos, but without being able to issue movement commands, straying from a narrow focus risks losing sensor lock and a return to the last checkpoint. Speaking of which, although most of the cut-scenes are forgettable, they're also un-skipable, meaning you may see them repeatedly after restarts. Luckily, when the single player game is done, there's plenty more to get on with. GR:FS multiplayer is very much a work in progress, and there are some stability, balancing and lobby issues with U-Play still to be sorted, but it's clear the developers have been busy since their recent 600,000-player beta test. The original three multiplayer modes – Conflict, Saboteur and Guerilla – have been boosted with 3 more: Decoy, Siege and a split-screen Co-Op Campaign. Conflict has two teams competing to see who can fulfill the most objectives in 15 minutes. Saboteur is a race to carry a bomb to the rival team's detonation area. Decoy and Siege are best-of-three modes; the first a slightly confusing one involving one real objective and two decoy traps, the second with no respawns and both teams up against the clock to claim or defend a base. Finally, Guerilla is a Horde variant where your team has to withstand 50 waves of increasingly hostile enemies. With character classes that owe a clear debt to Battlefield 3, you get a choice of three to start with and two more unlocked on reaching level 50. Scouts are basically snipers, fleet footed and supported by camo suits. Engineers can hack enemy scanners for intel, but are also useful in close combat. Finally, there's Riflemen, who can lay down suppressing fire and soak up more damage. Whichever character or mode you choose, GR:FS is unashamedly team focused, with frantic battles best won by supporting your colleagues and additional bonuses, upgrades and kill-streaks awarded for objectives solved by teamwork. This won't please lone snipers or last-man-standing fans, but when it works with the right compadres, GR:FS is a refreshing alternative to the usual FPS machismo. However, with only two maps for each multiplayer mode and four for Guerilla, Ubisoft is not exactly splashing out on content. This may be due to a premium DLC pack coming in July with more maps, weapons and upgrades, but including a few more maps would have been a nice reward for a patient Ghost Recon community that now risks being divided between DLC haves and have-nots. GR:FS is so nearly a landmark game. It's busting with great gadgets, challenging and unusual to play and committed to a true co-op spirit that most rivals have long since abandoned. If only it looked a little better, had a few more maps and U-Play made it easier to find a quick online match-up with your mates. Even so, it's a worthy alternative to any FPS and puts the Ghost Recon franchise right back at the cutting edge
GR:FS adopts a close up third-person perspective, but plays very much like an FPS, packed with in-your-face action right from the offset – something that might surprise fans of the series. With four acts – set in Africa, Pakistan, Russia and Norway – GR:FS fits so much into its generic 14-mission campaign it can feel a bit rushed. There are obvious debts to Crysis 2 and Deus Ex, particularly with futuristic gear such as the camoflage suit offering ghostly protection provided you don't move too fast or fire a weapon. But some ideas are both original and superbly realised. Take the Sync Shot, where you can paint up to four targets for team mates to establish line of sight for a coordinated kill. It's a great idea that's bound to be copied by others, as will some of the gadgets. From the brilliant Warhound mobile artillery platform that launches mortars or sidewinder missiles according to remote commands, to the portable UAV's that hover above the battlefield picking out targets, GR:FS has the kind of gadgets James Bond would kill for. And although we're used to seeing intelligent HUDs these days, GR:FS has one of the best – including a super sharp Magnetic View mode, which picks out armed enemies and other metal objects such as landmines. GR:FS also keeps the gun club happy with a massive selection of more than 50 weapons – each of which can be customised – in seven categories with more than 600 separate components. From sniper scopes to armour-piercing rounds, custom stocks and retractable undercarriages, there are so many choices it's tempting to keep replaying levels until you find your ultimate combo. It's fun to play too, with a learning curve that tempts you with new gadgets every few levels and some decent squad AI to back you up. And although making progress is heavily geared towards finding and taking cover, it makes this easier with a cover-dash command that lets you sprint between them by holding down the X key. However, there are some problems. For starters, the engine is far better at depicting gizmos than environments, with largely flat textures, cramped locations and occasional graphical glitches throughout – even in cutscenes. It's also ironic that most of the eye-catching moments – the sandstorms and blizzards or the way the screen shakes when under suppressing fire – are also ones that reduce your visibility to near zero. GR:FS is also very linear, with each level providing a single objective and only additional challenges for, say for killing 15 enemies in Magnetic mode. Admittedly, giving total player freedom would undermine the squad-based ethos, but without being able to issue movement commands, straying from a narrow focus risks losing sensor lock and a return to the last checkpoint. Speaking of which, although most of the cut-scenes are forgettable, they're also un-skipable, meaning you may see them repeatedly after restarts. Luckily, when the single player game is done, there's plenty more to get on with. GR:FS multiplayer is very much a work in progress, and there are some stability, balancing and lobby issues with U-Play still to be sorted, but it's clear the developers have been busy since their recent 600,000-player beta test. The original three multiplayer modes – Conflict, Saboteur and Guerilla – have been boosted with 3 more: Decoy, Siege and a split-screen Co-Op Campaign. Conflict has two teams competing to see who can fulfill the most objectives in 15 minutes. Saboteur is a race to carry a bomb to the rival team's detonation area. Decoy and Siege are best-of-three modes; the first a slightly confusing one involving one real objective and two decoy traps, the second with no respawns and both teams up against the clock to claim or defend a base. Finally, Guerilla is a Horde variant where your team has to withstand 50 waves of increasingly hostile enemies. With character classes that owe a clear debt to Battlefield 3, you get a choice of three to start with and two more unlocked on reaching level 50. Scouts are basically snipers, fleet footed and supported by camo suits. Engineers can hack enemy scanners for intel, but are also useful in close combat. Finally, there's Riflemen, who can lay down suppressing fire and soak up more damage. Whichever character or mode you choose, GR:FS is unashamedly team focused, with frantic battles best won by supporting your colleagues and additional bonuses, upgrades and kill-streaks awarded for objectives solved by teamwork. This won't please lone snipers or last-man-standing fans, but when it works with the right compadres, GR:FS is a refreshing alternative to the usual FPS machismo. However, with only two maps for each multiplayer mode and four for Guerilla, Ubisoft is not exactly splashing out on content. This may be due to a premium DLC pack coming in July with more maps, weapons and upgrades, but including a few more maps would have been a nice reward for a patient Ghost Recon community that now risks being divided between DLC haves and have-nots. GR:FS is so nearly a landmark game. It's busting with great gadgets, challenging and unusual to play and committed to a true co-op spirit that most rivals have long since abandoned. If only it looked a little better, had a few more maps and U-Play made it easier to find a quick online match-up with your mates. Even so, it's a worthy alternative to any FPS and puts the Ghost Recon franchise right back at the cutting edge
It should be a detective’s dream come true. The police have their man, their investigation sewn up with a tidy bow of his own damning words. Far from it, for now the police must try to prove that he did what he said he did. And in the case of the suspect, Pedro Hernandez, and the boy, Etan Patz, that is not going to be easy. In many ways, this confession is a worst-case scenario of corroboration, starting with the body. The police said Mr. Hernandez confessed to strangling Etan in the basement of the SoHo bodega where he worked in 1979 and dumping the body in a bag with the garbage on the street. Had he buried it in a lot someplace, the police could dig, but Mr. Hernandez’s version of events renders the haystack too big, the needle almost certainly gone for good. The prosecution of Mr. Hernandez ground forward on Friday, with his arraignment on second-degree murder charges. At the same time, officers tried to return to the past, stepping down into the basement of what is now a boutique eyeglasses shop to document its current appearance, not even pretending to believe there are any clues to be found. The modern training that detectives receive goes out the window here: video from street cameras; incriminating e-mails; MetroCard swipe data; cellphone logs. “Time is an enemy here,” said Vernon J. Geberth, a retired New York City police lieutenant commander in the Bronx. He said he was struck by the absence of corroborating details in the news accounts of Mr. Hernandez’s confession. “I have to ask myself a question, do they have something they’re not telling us?” he said. So how do you corroborate Mr. Hernandez’s story? A New York detective and an assistant district attorney, both veterans and both speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not involved in the Patz case, spoke of ways to tackle such a difficult case. “Usually, there is a scene, usually there is a body,” the prosecutor said. “If you don’t have physical evidence that points to your guy, you go into your guy’s background. How did his mother treat him? Why this? Did his brother die? So, he wanted revenge? You look for family members, you look for relatives, you look for teachers. Why would he do such a thing?” “You want to make sure he’s not a chronic confessor,” the detective said. Many books are about those who confessed to crimes they did not commit. Detectives have most likely returned to Mr. Hernandez’s story. “You always go back for more detail, more detail, more detail,” Mr. Geberth said. “The confession is usually devoid of a lot of facts. They just want to get it out. Once it’s out, the barrier has been crossed.” The need to confess behind him, the suspect may relax. “Get him something to eat, something to drink. ‘By the way, did you speak to anybody? Did you go to work the next day, or take the day off?’ Important things.” The police know who worked at the bodega in 1979 because several employees were interviewed when Etan disappeared. Did Mr. Hernandez say or do anything strange at that time? Mr. Hernandez’s family said he spoke of having done “a bad thing and killed a child in New York,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said Thursday night. The detective I spoke with said he would return to those people, and find others. “What he said to them, when he said it, what details he gave. What was his demeanor? Has he ever admitted to doing anything else?” He would try to find other people with whom Mr. Hernandez spoke about the boy. “Interview people who haven’t come forward.” The detective said he would have revisited the scene with the suspect as it was in 1979, in a room with photographs from that time. “I would take the photographs and say, ‘Point to where you met him. Point to where he was,’ ” the detective said. “I’d have him put an ‘X’ on it with a Magic Marker and sign it.” Why? “Great evidence in court,” he said. “When you go to court, you not only have his statement saying that’s what happened, but you have evidence for jurors to see.” Jurors. That there are 12 people walking around who may one day sit in judgment of Mr. Hernandez is what has the police hunting for proof and for the holy grail — motive, the prosecutor said. “Corroboration is such a legal thing, it’s a thin requirement,” he said. “The question is, do you get the jury to believe this is the real thing?” Jurors, he said, “care about why.” E-mail: crimescene@nytimes.com Twitter: @mwilsonnyt
It should be a detective’s dream come true. The police have their man, their investigation sewn up with a tidy bow of his own damning words. Far from it, for now the police must try to prove that he did what he said he did. And in the case of the suspect, Pedro Hernandez, and the boy, Etan Patz, that is not going to be easy. In many ways, this confession is a worst-case scenario of corroboration, starting with the body. The police said Mr. Hernandez confessed to strangling Etan in the basement of the SoHo bodega where he worked in 1979 and dumping the body in a bag with the garbage on the street. Had he buried it in a lot someplace, the police could dig, but Mr. Hernandez’s version of events renders the haystack too big, the needle almost certainly gone for good. The prosecution of Mr. Hernandez ground forward on Friday, with his arraignment on second-degree murder charges. At the same time, officers tried to return to the past, stepping down into the basement of what is now a boutique eyeglasses shop to document its current appearance, not even pretending to believe there are any clues to be found. The modern training that detectives receive goes out the window here: video from street cameras; incriminating e-mails; MetroCard swipe data; cellphone logs. “Time is an enemy here,” said Vernon J. Geberth, a retired New York City police lieutenant commander in the Bronx. He said he was struck by the absence of corroborating details in the news accounts of Mr. Hernandez’s confession. “I have to ask myself a question, do they have something they’re not telling us?” he said. So how do you corroborate Mr. Hernandez’s story? A New York detective and an assistant district attorney, both veterans and both speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not involved in the Patz case, spoke of ways to tackle such a difficult case. “Usually, there is a scene, usually there is a body,” the prosecutor said. “If you don’t have physical evidence that points to your guy, you go into your guy’s background. How did his mother treat him? Why this? Did his brother die? So, he wanted revenge? You look for family members, you look for relatives, you look for teachers. Why would he do such a thing?” “You want to make sure he’s not a chronic confessor,” the detective said. Many books are about those who confessed to crimes they did not commit. Detectives have most likely returned to Mr. Hernandez’s story. “You always go back for more detail, more detail, more detail,” Mr. Geberth said. “The confession is usually devoid of a lot of facts. They just want to get it out. Once it’s out, the barrier has been crossed.” The need to confess behind him, the suspect may relax. “Get him something to eat, something to drink. ‘By the way, did you speak to anybody? Did you go to work the next day, or take the day off?’ Important things.” The police know who worked at the bodega in 1979 because several employees were interviewed when Etan disappeared. Did Mr. Hernandez say or do anything strange at that time? Mr. Hernandez’s family said he spoke of having done “a bad thing and killed a child in New York,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said Thursday night. The detective I spoke with said he would return to those people, and find others. “What he said to them, when he said it, what details he gave. What was his demeanor? Has he ever admitted to doing anything else?” He would try to find other people with whom Mr. Hernandez spoke about the boy. “Interview people who haven’t come forward.” The detective said he would have revisited the scene with the suspect as it was in 1979, in a room with photographs from that time. “I would take the photographs and say, ‘Point to where you met him. Point to where he was,’ ” the detective said. “I’d have him put an ‘X’ on it with a Magic Marker and sign it.” Why? “Great evidence in court,” he said. “When you go to court, you not only have his statement saying that’s what happened, but you have evidence for jurors to see.” Jurors. That there are 12 people walking around who may one day sit in judgment of Mr. Hernandez is what has the police hunting for proof and for the holy grail — motive, the prosecutor said. “Corroboration is such a legal thing, it’s a thin requirement,” he said. “The question is, do you get the jury to believe this is the real thing?” Jurors, he said, “care about why.” E-mail: crimescene@nytimes.com Twitter: @mwilsonnyt
On the 25th anniversary of the genesis of his game series Metal Gear, creator Hideo Kojima reflects on a career spent battling the stigma of working in video games in the second of a two part interview feature, exclusive to the Guardian Share 42 Email Solid Snake ... Kojima named his lead character after Snake Plissken, who was played by Kurt Russell in the John Carpenter film Escape From New York Despite finding like-minded individuals at Konami, Kojima's first couple of years at the studio were far from easy. For one, his directorial ambition was fiercely at odds with its orthodox Japanese institutional hierarchy. "Lost World was the first project I was assigned to and the game was cancelled after six months," he says. "It was a serious blow to all of us on the team. I couldn't believe it. After that I began to work on Metal Gear. Konami wanted a war game, because they were incredibly popular at that time. But I didn't want to make the same as everyone else so I started thinking of ways in which I could subvert the genre." It was at this point that Kojima's love for film came into play. "I remembered the film The Great Escape and thought this would be a good approach for something distinct. My first concept was for a game in which you were a prisoner of war and simply had to escape. If you were caught you'd be brought back to the prison. The idea was for a non-combat game. "But I had such a hard time convincing people. I had so many things going against me at that time. For one, my first game had been cancelled, so I hadn't released anything yet. Then I was working in quite a large creative group, and I was the youngest. Finally, the type of game I wanted to make didn't exist at that time. The odds were stacked against me and it was very hard to earn the trust of the team." After a few months of failing to make his voice heard, Kojima managed to convince the most senior member of the team to meet with him. "He listened to my frustrations," Kojima says, "and then approached one of the higher-ups in the company who must have seen something in me as he invited me to pitch my ideas for Metal Gear in front of everyone. Everyone in the team saw that it was a revolutionary idea, I think, and from then on, I had their support." The first Metal Gear was developed for the MSX, a home computer format that enjoyed a fraction of the market share of Nintendo's inaugural games console, the Famicom. While many would have seen being told to make a game for underdog technology as a drawback, Kojima turned it to his advantage. "The MSX audience was more technologically savvy than the Famicom audience and as such the game had a much wider influence than it perhaps might have if it had just released on Nintendo's hardware. "We spent a long time working on animations that wouldn't have been possible on the Famicom. I would go so far to say that, had I been working in the Famicom department from the beginning I probably wouldn't have come up with the idea for Metal Gear. The features of the systems are so different. And the game concept wouldn't have passed Konami's internal processing, which required more mainstream, family-friendly titles for the Famicom." Following the success of the game Konami commissioned a sequel, this time for the Nintendo hardware. As Kojima had been hired to work in the MSX division, he was kept separate from the Famicom team, only hearing about the project second hand. "I heard about Snake's Revenge through rumours, initially," he says. "I was quite new at the company and had no influence on the other departments. "Then one day I met someone on the train who worked in the Famicom department. He used to work for me and was now working on the sequel. He said: 'I don't think this is a true sequel. I think you should make the true sequel.' So on my way home I began to think about what that might look like. Without that encounter I probably wouldn't have pursued a proper sequel, and there might never have been a Metal Gear Solid." Kojima was merely a game designer at that time, and had no detailed knowledge of the budgets involved, but the trust he had gained from the first game caused Konami to pour more money into his sequel. "Because we were making a war game, Konami wanted the experience to be authentic, so every week they paid for us to visit a forest in the mountains nearby. We would dress up in military uniform and play games there. It was a good time." Even at this early point in his career, Kojima's directorial flair was irrepressible, and, without programming knowledge, he found himself frustrated by having to rely on programmers to bring his vision to life. "I would tell the programmers what I wanted to show on screen, when I wanted the dialogue to display, or a music cue to sound," he says. "But they wouldn't do it how I wanted. They would change it slightly to what they thought was best. "It was hugely frustrating making games at that time for me. I wanted to control everything. So, after the second Metal Gear launched, I developed my own scripting engine and decided to work on adventure games so that I could have complete control over when the animation played or when the music triggered. That's when I developed Snatcher and Policenauts. It was a way to take creative control back from the programmers." But by 1998, Kojima had been promoted to a managerial role at Konami, and enjoyed autonomy to choose the people he wanted on the team – staff who would complement his vision. One such hire was Yoji Shinkawa, an artist that Kojima hired straight out of college in 1994. "Shinkawa was born to be a video game artist," says Kojima. "As soon as I knew I was to be making Metal Gear Solid, I asked Shinkawa to join the team and his work, as much as anything, defined the series from there on." Metal Gear Solid's development coincided with a technological shift in the medium, that brought with it creative challenges: the move from 2D graphics (and the accompanying gameplay) to the third dimension. Kojima's team developed a 3D engine from scratch for the game and Shinkawa would work from home for months at a time creating the 3D models that would populate the game. "Yoji created real life 3D plastic models of all of the game's vehicles and as he used so many chemicals, he had to work from home as the fumes were harmful to the rest of the team," Kojima says. "I would visit his apartment every day to check that he was OK. The first time I went there the floor was covered in plastic parts." The game launched to critical acclaim and commercial success. Its brilliance was in the packaging of the idea, couching the hide-and-seek act of creeping through the shadows in a tight, carefully orchestrated scenario in which one man must infiltrate a radioactive waste facility armed with little more than a radio, a bandana and a packet of cigarettes. Despite the one-man army set-up, Metal Gear Solid's narrative offers more layers of complexity than a Rambo or a Bond movie, Kojima shying away from a chance for a character to soliloquise on the nature of warfare, or the role of solider pawn, those very same figures controlled by the player, on the battlefield. I ask whether the reaction to the game surprised him, or whether he knew he had created something special. "We worked so hard on that game that there wasn't even time to think about how it might be received," he says. "We were just making the game that we wanted to play and I don't think I had any expectations that it was going to be a big game. So when I heard it was selling well in America it didn't feel real. "I think the first time the game's success struck me was when I came to London in 1999. We visited Forbidden Planet to promote the game. I walked in and the shopkeepers knew about me. I couldn't believe it. It was the most surprising moment in my life." Despite this success, Kojima was most interested in impressing the woman who had supported him from the very beginning: his mother. "About that time I heard that my mother had stopped telling her friends what I did for a living," he tells me. "She was hugely supportive in the beginning. But after a decade or so her friends' sons and daughters all had high positions in big companies. I think she felt a little awkward about what I did by this point." But Metal Gear Solid's success convinced Konami to plough a huge amount of money into its sequel, developed for Sony's PlayStation 2. "We had so much more budget so we were able to go to Hollywood and hire a composer [Harry Gregson-Williams]," he says. "That was a huge moment for me, made all the better because Harry had heard of my games." Following Metal Gear Solid 2's release, Kojima was listed by Newsweek as one of the 'Top 10 People To Watch In 2003'. "After that, my mother began to tell all of her friends about what I did," says Kojima, laughing. "It was sweet. By that time she was 70 years old. But she decided that she was going to play through my games. "It took her an entire year to complete Metal Gear Solid 3. She would get her friends to help her. When she defeated The End [a character the player faces off against in one of the game's final missions] she called me up and said: 'It is finished'." Today, there is little that Kojima would change about his career, and he has no regrets: "Looking back, I am thankful that I didn't go into the film industry," he says. "If I had joined that industry I wouldn't have been able to make the kind of films I wanted to, and I really enjoy the games I make now." Indeed, Kojima has lost none of his infectious energy and drive to create. He arrives to work at 6.30am each day, and spends an hour meditating on his life before heading into the business of the day, which is split equally between managerial responsibilities and creative ones. "I wouldn't have taken the managerial role if I wasn't heavily involved in the creative process too," he says. "I have to have a creative role otherwise I simply wouldn't come into work. I try to always have a game design role as part of my responsibilities at any one time. If I didn't have this, I wouldn't be able to do what I do." One part of his daily ritual stems from even earlier than his formative days working as a game designer for the MSX. Now 48, Kojima's father's influence on him is still very apparent in his routine. Every day, no matter how busy his schedule, the designer takes 90-odd minutes to watch a film at his desk. "It's part of my ritual to watch a new film every day, no matter what," he says. "It's important to me." Sensing that the habit is as much a tribute to his father's demand that the family watch a film a day as it is a way to draw creative inspiration from another medium, I venture the question: "Do you think your father would have been proud of what you do?" "I don't think..." he says, quietly. "I mean. If he was still alive… Well, I don't think he would be unhappy about my choice."
Roughly 40 examiners from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and 70 staff members from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency are embedded in the nation’s largest bank. They are typically assigned to the departments undertaking the greatest risks, like the structured products trading desk. Even as the chief investment office swelled in size and made increasingly large bets, regulators did not put any examiners in the unit’s offices in London or New York, according to current and former regulators who spoke only on condition of anonymity. Senior JPMorgan executives assured the bank’s watchdogs after the financial crisis that the chief investment office, with hundreds of billions in investments, was not taking risks that would be a cause for concern, people briefed on the matter said. Just weeks before the trading losses became public, bank officials also dismissed the worry of a senior New York Fed examiner about the mounting size of the bets, according to current Fed officials. The lapses have raised questions about who, if anyone, was policing the chief investment office and whether regulators were sufficiently independent. Instead of putting the JPMorgan unit under regular watch, the comptroller’s office and the Fed chose to examine it periodically. The bank pushback also suggests that JPMorgan had sway over its regulators, an influence that several said was enhanced by the bank’s charismatic chief executive, Jamie Dimon, long considered Washington’s favorite banker. Now, as regulators scramble to determine whether the chief investment office took inappropriate risks, some former Fed officials are asking whether the investigation should be spearheaded by the New York Fed, where Mr. Dimon has a seat on the board. Some lawmakers and former regulators also have reservations about the comptroller’s office, which is investigating the trade and was the primary regulator for JPMorgan’s chief investment unit. “The central question is why Jamie Dimon was able to so successfully convince both its regulators that there was nothing to see at the chief investment office,” said Mark Williams, a professor of finance at Boston University, who also served as a Federal Reserve Bank examiner in Boston and San Francisco. “To me, it suggests that he is too close to his regulators.” Regulators, for their part, say they cannot micromanage a bank or outlaw its risk taking and did not bow to bank pressure when assigning examiners. William C. Dudley, president of the New York Fed, has said that JPMorgan’s losses did not pose a threat to the bank’s viability. In a statement on Friday, the comptroller of the currency, Thomas J. Curry, said, “I am committed to ensuring this agency provides strong supervision for all of the institutions we oversee.” Regulators are not typically stationed at divisions like JPMorgan’s chief investment office, which are known as Treasury units. The units hedge risk and invest extra money on hand, and tend to make short-term investments. But JPMorgan’s office, with a portfolio of nearly $400 billion, had become a profit center that made large bets and recorded $5 billion in profit over the three years through 2011. Officials of JPMorgan declined to comment on its relationships with regulators. Long before the recent trading blunder, JPMorgan had a pattern of pushing back on regulators, according to more than a dozen current and former regulators interviewed for this article. That resistance increased after Mr. Dimon steered JPMorgan through the financial crisis in better shape than virtually all its rivals. “JPMorgan has been screaming bloody murder about not needing regulators hovering, especially in their London office,” said a former examiner embedded at the bank, adding, in reference to Mr. Dimon, “But he was trusted because he had done so well through the turmoil.” Even now, executives at JPMorgan disagree with some regulators over how quickly the bank should unwind the soured trade, according to people briefed on the negotiations. JPMorgan would like to be done with the bad bet that has resulted in at least $3 billion in losses already, but senior executives argue it is a delicate process, especially as traders and hedge funds on the opposite side of the trade seize on the fact that JPMorgan is under pressure to exit the position.
