Japan is back in one of its all-too-familiar slumps, said John Cassidy at The New Yorker. The world's third-largest economy slipped into a recession last week, its fourth since the financial crisis, prompting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to dissolve the Diet and call a snap election. It's "a risky but justified gambit," since an electoral victory later this month will give him a mandate to continue his so-called Abenomics stimulus policies.