Lakers fire coach Mike Brown after 1-4 start

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Lakers fired coach Mike Brown on Friday after a 1-4 start to his second season in charge.

Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak announced the surprising move several hours before they hosted Golden State. Assistant coach Bernie Bickerstaff will coach the Lakers against the Warriors.

"This was a difficult and painful decision to make," Kupchak said. "Mike was very hard-working and dedicated, but we felt it was in the best interest of the team to make a change at this time. We appreciate Mike's efforts and contributions and wish him and his family the best of luck."

Los Angeles began the season with championship expectations after trading for center Dwight Howard and point guard Steve Nash, adding two superstars alongside Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol.

But the Lakers went 0-8 during the preseason last month for the first time in franchise history before stumbling into the regular season with an 0-3 start, losing to Dallas, Portland and the Clippers. After finally beating Detroit last Sunday for their first win, the Lakers looked listless again in a loss at Utah on Wednesday.

The Lakers' 1-4 record is the worst in the Western Conference, and owner Jim Buss had seen enough of the coach he hired just 18 months earlier to replace 11-time NBA champion Phil Jackson. Brown signed a four-year deal worth roughly $18 million in May 2011.

"It's a pretty direct message to all of us," Gasol said while leaving the Lakers' shootaround Friday morning in El Segundo. "There's no messing around. It's time for all of us to step it up."

While Lakers fans had reacted with their usual panic whenever the 16-time NBA champions lose a few games in a row, Kupchak and Buss publicly appeared to stand firmly behind Brown, the longtime Cleveland Cavaliers coach. Brown had pleaded for patience with his integration of several new players into his lineup while everybody learned a new offense.

"I have great respect for the Buss family and the Lakers' storied tradition, and I thank them for the opportunity they afforded me," Brown said in a statement issued by the Lakers. "I have a deep appreciation for the coaches and players that I worked with this past year, and I wish the organization nothing but success as they move forward."

Brown's players all were fully behind him in public, with Bryant vocally suggesting critics of the Lakers' new offense should give them time to get it working. Bryant missed a significant portion of training camp while dealing with minor injuries, and Nash has a small fracture in his leg that has kept him out of the lineup since the Lakers' second game.

Yet the Lakers had given no indication they might pull one of the earliest coaching changes in NBA history until Kupchak gathered the players Friday morning to inform them of the decision.

"He told us the decision was made," Gasol said. "We didn't have a good start, and this is a team that was built to win. That's what we're all here to do."

Along with the usual urgency accompanying any Lakers season, Howard is under contract for just one more season before the six-time All-Star center can become a free agent. The Lakers' core players around Howard are all over 30, and the 38-year-old Nash barely made his debut before getting sidelined.

Los Angeles went 41-25 and reached the second round of the playoffs last season in Brown's debut, losing to Oklahoma City. Brown received criticism even for that largely successful season, with Magic Johnson predicting Brown would be fired if the Lakers lost to Denver in the first round.

Brown implemented a new offensive scheme this fall that didn't appear to suit his players' talents, yet the Lakers also played spotty defense, Brown's specialty. The Princeton-based offense received ridicule, but Bryant and his teammates largely defended the motion scheme, saying they needed time to implement it.

"I don't think we lost faith at any moment," Gasol said. "I think we all believed in what we were trying to do. We also understood it was going to take a little bit of time to do things the way they should have been done. As far as our game, it wasn't happening as fast as we all wanted it to."

Brown is a protégé of San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich. He led Cleveland to the 2007 NBA finals and went 272-138 with the Cavaliers, becoming the most successful coach in franchise history while compiling the league's best regular-season record in each of his last two seasons.

The 68-year-old Bickerstaff joined Brown's coaching staff in September. He was a head coach in Charlotte, Seattle, Denver and Washington, going 415-517.

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Well: Can Foods Affect Colon Cancer Survival?

A new study suggests that what you eat may affect your chances of surviving colon cancer.

The research is among the first to look at the impact that specific nutrients have on the likelihood of disease recurrence in people with colon cancer, one of the leading causes of cancer death in the United States. It found that people treated for Stage 3 disease, in which tumor cells have spread to lymph nodes, had greatly increased chances of dying of it or experiencing a recurrence if their diets were heavy in carbohydrate-rich foods that cause spikes in blood sugar and insulin.

The patients who consumed the most carbohydrates and foods with high glycemic loads — a measure of the extent to which a serving of food will raise blood sugar — had an 80 percent greater chance of dying or having a recurrence during the roughly seven-year study period than those who had the lowest levels. Stage 3 colon cancer patients typically have a five-year survival rate of about 50 to 65 percent.

The study, however, was observational, meaning it could only highlight an association between carbohydrates and cancer outcomes without proving direct cause and effect. The researchers also obtained some of their data from food questionnaires that required patients to recall details about their diets, a method that can be unreliable.

Still, the researchers, who published their findings in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, believe insulin may play a critical role in colon cancer recurrence. Chronically high insulin levels have been linked to cancer recurrence and mortality in previous research, and people with a history of Type 2 diabetes or elevated plasma C-peptide, a marker of long-term insulin production, have also been found to have an increased risk of colon cancer. One hypothesis is that insulin may fuel the growth of cancer cells and prevent cell death, or apoptosis, in cancer cells that have spread.

“It’s not simply that all carbs are bad or that you should avoid all sugar,” said Dr. Jeffrey A. Meyerhardt, the lead author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. It’s not as simple as ‘sugar causes cancer to grow.’”

He added: “Different carbs and sugar lead to different responses in your body. I think people should focus on a well-balanced diet” and substitute foods associated with lower glycemic loads or carbs for foods that have higher levels.

Earlier research published by Dr. Meyerhardt’s group showed that Stage 3 colon cancer patients who most closely followed a Western-style diet — with high intakes of meat, fat, refined grains and sugary desserts — had a threefold increase in recurrence and death from the disease compared with those who most strongly deviated from Western patterns of eating.

For this study, Dr. Meyerhardt and his team wanted to see to what extent carbohydrate intake could influence the progression of the disease, so they followed about 1,000 Stage 3 colon cancer patients taking part in a clinical trial sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. The patients, who had all had surgery and chemotherapy as part of their treatments, provided information on their diets and lifestyle habits. But the researchers went beyond just carbohydrate and sugar intake, taking into account glycemic measures.

The glycemic index, an increasingly popular nutritional measure, looks at the rate at which carbohydrate-containing foods raise a person’s fasting level of blood sugar and subsequent need for insulin. Sugary drinks, white bread and other highly processed carbohydrates rank higher on the index, while those that are digested more slowly, like brown rice, many vegetables, unrefined grains and legumes, have a lower index value.

Another barometer, however, is the glycemic load, which refers to the blood sugar effect of a standard serving of a food. A glycemic load of 10 or less for a food is generally considered low, while 20 or more is high. The latest study showed that glycemic load and total carbohydrate intake were the best predictors of cancer recurrence and mortality, and the link was strongest in people who were overweight or obese.

Dr. Meyerhardt said the findings suggest that colon cancer patients would be wise to keep glycemic load in mind while making food decisions, looking for ways to work into their diets foods that rank lower on the scale.

“So if you think about beverages, most juices and certainly sodas have a higher glycemic load than flavored waters and tomato juice and things like that,” he said. “Fruits like a date or raisins have very high glycemic loads, whereas fresh fruits like an apple, orange or cantaloupe all have sugar but have a very low glycemic load. Substitute brown rice for white, whole grains instead of white bread, and instead of having a starchy potato as your side dish, substitute beans and vegetables.”

One expert who was not involved in the research, Somdat Mahabir, a nutritional epidemiologist with the National Cancer Institute’s division of cancer control and population sciences, said the findings from the latest study must be borne out in further research. But in the meantime, making dietary changes that reduce glycemic load is a reasonable recommendation for colon cancer patients, he said, since it can only be helpful, not harmful.

“The results of the current study need to be confirmed, but the current indications are that diet is important to colon cancer survival,” Dr. Mahabir said.

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Your Money: After the Storm: Managing Your Homeowner’s Claim

Tom Mihalek/Reuters

Mark Baronowski shoveled sand from the living room of a beach front property in Bay Head, N.J., last week. Many victims of Hurricane Sandy are novices when it comes to catastrophic insurance claims.

There is a sort of honeymoon period that occurs after a big storm like Hurricane Sandy, when insurance executives appear on the local news offering reassuring words. Their brightly painted vans pull into residential neighborhoods amid the standing water and debris. Everyone is hopeful. Handshakes and back-patting all around.

That period is about to end. Prices for roofers and construction materials will rise, disadvantageous parsing of policy language will commence and gangs of class-action lawyers will round up aggrieved clients who still have months of homelessness ahead of them. Many claims will take years to settle.

It happens every time, and so it will with this storm. That’s not to say that a majority of people with insurance claims won’t be satisfied with the check they receive or won’t get one quickly.

But when this many people have extensive damage to their most significant asset, billions of dollars are at stake for the companies that have the power to make them whole. So there is no reason for policyholders to be anything but wary until their own big check clears.

Many victims of Hurricane Sandy are novices when it comes to catastrophic insurance claims. So to see what sort of resistance they should expect shortly, I turned to the lawyers and adjusters-for-hire who do nothing but negotiate with insurance companies all day long. Some of them used to work for the companies, in fact.

Here are the things they warn people to watch out for:

THAT INDEPENDENT ADJUSTER Many people with damaged homes have started to meet with representatives who assessed their damaged homes to estimate repair costs. They may have introduced themselves as “independent adjusters,” but this is a misnomer. They represent the insurance company and are not neutral.

In storms like this, large numbers of these freelance claims adjusters parachute in from out of town. In the industry, they are known as storm troopers. They work 18-hour days for a while since no insurance company has enough of its own full-time staff to deploy after a storm like this one. Often, they make enough money not to work for months afterward.

“These guys have a lot of work to do, and it’s a thankless job,” said Matthew Tennenbaum, who used to be an independent adjuster but switched sides and now works for policyholders as a “public” adjuster in Cherry Hill, N.J.

Mr. Tennenbaum worries about the storm troopers’ thoroughness. “They’re going to see 10 properties a day and they’re quickly writing estimates,” he said. “If they spend an extra three or four hours properly writing one estimate, they could have written three more and made more money.”

Though many of them are former builders or contractors, they may not, if time is of the essence, always pull up every floor, explore every inch of the attic or look behind every wall. And they may not know much about your insurance company’s policy.

“The insurance companies hand them a manual, and they may not really understand the manual,” said J. Robert Hunter, the director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America, who has worked for insurance companies and once ran the federal flood insurance program.  “It’s a crash course at that point.”

  The good news here is that these are not the people who make the final call on your claim. But many policyholders assume that their word is the final word.

WIND VERSUS FLOOD Back at headquarters, other adjusters have their eye on an exclusion that will be crucial for this storm, with its horrific storm surges but relatively mild winds: homeowner’s insurance generally does not cover floods.

Unfortunately, many people do not know this and many more have not purchased or renewed policies with the federal flood insurance program that covers up to $250,000 of flood damage. Researchers from the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, working with colleagues at Florida State, the University of Miami and Columbia University, surveyed people in the storm’s path by telephone three days before it hit.

Among people within a block of a body of water, 46 percent had no flood insurance. In areas that had been evacuated in past storms or where the authorities advised people to leave, 58 percent did not have it. Moreover, 39 percent of all the people who thought they did have flood coverage mistakenly believed that their homeowner’s insurance covered it.

People without coverage but lots of damage from the storm surge might do one of a couple of things. A few stubborn ones will sue, arguing that if the wind drove the surge then it’s not really a flood. Judges haven’t taken kindly to this line of reasoning over the years, but that probably won’t keep people from trying again. The Federal Emergency Management Agency may also offer some assistance.

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Preparing to Step Aside in China, Hu Jintao Warns of Challenges

Changing of the Guard in China:
The New York Times’s Beijing correspondents discuss the challenges ahead for China as the country begins its once-in-a-decade leadership transition.

BEIJING — Capping 10 careful years at the helm of the Communist Party, China’s top leader, Hu Jintao, on Thursday boasted of successes during his tenure while issuing a blunt warning against unrest and political reform.

Mr. Hu, 69, is to step down as the party’s general secretary next week, handing over power to his designated successor, Xi Jinping. His speech at the opening here in Beijing of the Communist Party’s 18th Congress was likely to be his last major address — a chance to write his own eulogy while also setting the course for Mr. Xi.

“He’s worried about how history will view him,” said Qian Gang, who works with the China Media Project of Hong Kong University. “On the whole, he is against reform.”

Formally, Mr. Hu nodded to almost every manner of reform: economic, social, political and environmental. But, in the fashion of his predecessors, this was balanced with warnings of the need to guard against a rise in unrest. It was an unusual admission for a man whose signature slogan is creating for China a “harmonious society.”

“Social contradictions have clearly increased,” said the formal 64-page document issued at the congress. (Mr. Hu’s speech, even at 100 minutes, was only a summary.)

“There are many problems concerning the public’s immediate interests in education, employment, social security, health care, housing, the environment, food and drug safety, workplace safety, public security and law enforcement.”

The solution, Mr. Hu said, was “reform and opening up,” a policy initiated by the man who chose him for the job nearly two decades ago, the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

Mr. Hu also lauded his own contribution to Communist Party ideology: “Scientific Development.” Most of his predecessors have had their own ideologies enshrined as guiding state doctrines. His repetition of the phrase — which means that the party should be pragmatic and follow policies that are demonstrably effective — implied that he, too, would be so honored.

But his caveats to reform were many.

According to Mr. Qian, a leading expert on textual analysis of Chinese leaders’ speeches, Mr. Hu’s speech hit on almost every anti-reform phrase used by Chinese Communist leaders.

He referred to Communist China’s founder three times with the phrase “Mao Zedong Thought,” and said the party must “resolutely not follow Western political systems,” something not mentioned at the last party congress five years ago.

“They don’t say these terms lightly,” Mr. Qian said. “When they mention it, it matters.”

Mr. Hu also coined a new term, pledging that the party will not to follow the “wicked way” of changing the party’s course.

Mr. Hu’s speech is thought to have been drawn up in cooperation with his successor, Mr. Xi. While Mr. Xi is widely thought to be consulting with liberal members of China’s intelligentsia, he either did not oppose Mr. Hu’s direction or was not able to change it.

That is important, observers say, because Mr. Xi will not exercise unrestrained power when he takes over. Besides the other half-dozen members on the Standing Committee of the party’s Politburo, he will also have to listen to the advice of Mr. Hu, Mr. Hu’s own predecessor, Jiang Zemin, and an estimated 20 other “senior leaders.” As if to emphasize their role, these men were seated on the dais next to Mr. Hu. Many of them are in their 70s and 80s and have exercised power for decades.

“Xi Jinping certainly won’t be a Gorbachev,” said Yao Jianfu, a former official and researcher who closely follows Chinese politics and advocates democratic change. “Every aspect of reform has an important precondition — that the Communist Party remains in charge.”

Even though Mr. Hu’s speech was broadcast live on national television and on screens in Beijing subway cars, gauging popular opinion was difficult.

Microbloggers, who are mostly urban and fairly well educated, at times cast scorn on the rhetoric. One blogger listed the Marxist terminology that Mr. Hu used and wrote simply “madness.” Others used laughing emoticons, while some delved closely into the speech for clues to new policies — some noted his fleeting mention of China’s unpopular single-child policy.

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Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.

Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.

It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.

"It puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it," said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.

Part of the rationale behind the increase is that Google Ventures is a relatively young firm, founded in 2009. Some of the companies it backed two or three years ago are now at later stages, potentially requiring larger cash infusions to grow further.

Google Ventures has taken an eclectic approach, investing in a broad spectrum of companies ranging from medicine to clean power to coupon companies.

Every year, it typically funds 40-50 "seed-stage" deals where it invests $250,000 or less in a company, and perhaps around 15 deals where it invests up to $10 million, Maris said. It aims to complete one or two deals annually in the $20-$50 million range, Maris said.

LACKING SUPERSTARS

Some of its investments include Nest, a smart-thermostat company; Foundation Medicine, which applies genomic analysis to cancer care; Relay Rides, a carsharing service; and smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks. Last year, its portfolio company HomeAway raised $216 million in an initial public offering.

Still, Google Ventures lacks superstar companies such as microblogging service Twitter or online bulletin-board company Pinterest. The firm's recent hiring of high-profile entrepreneur Kevin Rose as a partner could help attract higher-profile deals.

Soon it could have even more cash to play around with. "Larry has repeatedly asked me: 'What do you think you could do with a billion a year?'" said Maris, referring to Google chief executive Larry Page.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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NHL, union hold labor talks a 3rd straight day

NEW YORK (AP) — The NHL and the players' association returned to the bargaining table Thursday, the third straight day the sides have met in an effort to end the lockout.

The work stoppage reached its 54th day, and this week is considered critical for the hockey season to be saved. The lockout is threatening to force the second cancellation of an NHL season in seven years.

Even if an agreement is reached soon, it isn't clear if any of this season's games that have been called off through Nov. 30 can be rescheduled. The NHL has already said a full 82-game season won't be played.

Owners and players had bargained for many hours over two days this week at an undisclosed site in New York. Little information about the talks has been disclosed by either side.

Thursday's discussions marked the fourth time in six days that face-to-face negotiations have taken place after both sides rejected proposals Oct. 18. The lockout, which began Sept. 16 after the collective bargaining agreement expired, has forced the cancellation of 327 regular-season games, including the New Year's Day Winter Classic in Michigan.

During a second consecutive day of marathon negotiations Wednesday, the players' association made an offer on revenue sharing, in which richer teams would help out poorer organizations, and another proposal regarding the "make-whole" provision that would guarantee full payment of all existing multiyear player contracts.

The NHL was expected to respond to both offers during talks Thursday.

Both issues are major hurdles in the way of making a deal. On Wednesday, the sides spent more than five hours dealing with the most contentious areas. Coupled with the more than seven hours they spent negotiating Tuesday, owners and players have been together about 13 hours this week.

"We do not intend to comment on the substance or subject matter," NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said in a statement Wednesday night.

NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr said the parties met to "discuss many of the key issues," but didn't elaborate Wednesday.

There is clearly still much to be done to work out the differences to reach a deal that will allow the already delayed and shortened season to begin.

Along with a handful of team owners, eight players attended Wednesday's talks, five fewer than Tuesday. Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby and others left New York to try to avoid the impending snowstorm that hit the area, the union said.

On Thursday, seven players were in attendance, according to the NHLPA.

In October, the players' association responded to an NHL offer with three of its own, but all of those were quickly dismissed by the league. That led to nearly three weeks without face-to-face discussions, although the parties kept in regular contact by phone.

Both sides have made proposals that included a 50-50 split of hockey-related revenues. The NHL has moved toward the players' side in the "make-whole" provision and whose share of the economic pie that money will come from.

Along with the split of hockey-related revenue and other core economic issues, contract lengths, arbitration and free agency also must be agreed upon.

The union accepted a salary cap in the previous labor pact, which wasn't reached until after the entire 2004-05 season was canceled because of a lockout. The union doesn't want to absorb the majority of concessions this time after the NHL had record revenue that exceeded $3 billion last season.

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Global Update: Polio Eradication Efforts in Pakistan Focus on Pashtuns

Michael Kamber for The New York Times

Polio will never be eradicated in Pakistan until a way is found to persuade poor Pashtuns to embrace the vaccine, according to a study released by the World Health Organization.

A survey of 1,017 parents of young children found that 41 percent had never heard of polio and 11 percent refused to vaccinate their children against it. The survey was done in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and the only big city in the world where polio persists; it was published in the agency’s November bulletin.

Parents from poor families “cited lack of permission from family elders,” said Dr. Anita Zaidi, who teaches pediatrics at the Aga Khan University in Karachi. Some rich parents also disdained the vaccine, saying it was “harmful or unnecessary,” she added.

Pashtuns account for 75 percent of Pakistan’s polio cases even though they are only 15 percent of the population. Wealthy children are safer because the virus travels in sewage, and their neighborhoods may have covered sewers and be less flood-prone.

Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in next-door Afghanistan, where polio has also never been wiped out. Most Taliban fighters are Pashtun, and some Taliban threatened to kill vaccinators earlier this year. Two W.H.O. vaccinators were shot in Karachi in July.

Rumors persist that the vaccine is a plot to sterilize Muslims. But the eradication drive is recruiting Pashtuns as vaccinators and asking prominent religious leaders from various sects to make videos endorsing the vaccine.

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News Analysis: For Obama, Housing Policy Presents Second-Term Headaches

A second-term president may be just the person to tackle America’s housing problems.

When President Obama first came into office, home prices were crashing, foreclosures were soaring and the previous Bush administration had just initiated the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed entities that agree to repay mortgages if the original borrower defaults.

With the market in shambles in 2008, the Obama administration pursued a tentative housing policy, for the most part avoiding big moves that might have further weakened the housing market or banks. Eventually, there were some bolder initiatives, like the national mortgage settlement with big banks as well as the Treasury Department’s later aid programs for homeowners.

But as President Obama’s first administration comes to an end, the government is still deeply embedded in the mortgage market. In the third quarter, various government entities backstopped 92 percent of all new residential mortgages, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a publication that focuses on the home loan industry.

Mr. Obama’s economic team has consistently said it wants the housing market to work without significant government support. But it has taken few actual steps to advance that idea.

“I think Obama is absolutely committed to reducing the government’s role,” said Thomas Lawler, a former chief economist at Fannie Mae and founder of Lawler Economic and Housing Consulting, an industry analysis firm. “But no one’s yet found a format to do that.”

Housing policy is hard to tackle because so many people have benefited from the status quo. The entire real estate system — the banks, the agents, the home buyers — all depend on a market that provides fixed-rate, 30-year mortgages that can be easily refinanced when interest rates drop. That sort of loan is rare outside of the United States. And any effort to overhaul housing and the mortgage market could eventually reduce the amount of such mortgages in the country, angering many and creating a political firestorm.

In other words, the best person to fundamentally change how housing works may be a president who won’t be running for office again.

Most immediately, the housing market has to be strong enough to deal with a government pullback. Some analysts think it’s ready. “I think the housing recovery is far enough along that they can start winding down Fannie and Freddie,” said Phillip L. Swagel at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, who served as assistant secretary for economic policy under Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.

The administration can take smaller steps first. Mr. Lawler, the housing economist, thinks the government could start to reduce the maximum amount that it will guarantee for Fannie and Freddie loans. In some areas, like parts of the Northeast and California, it is as high as $625,000. Before the financial crisis, it was essentially capped at $417,000.

The big question is whether the private sector — banks and investors that buy bonds backed with mortgages — will pick up the slack when the government eases out of the market. If they don’t, the supply of mortgages could fall and house prices could weaken.

Banks say their appetite depends on how new rules for mortgages turn out. In setting such regulations, some tough choices have to be made.

The new rules will effectively map the riskiness of various types of mortgages. In determining that, regulators will look at the features of the loans and the borrowers income. Banks say they are unlikely to hold loans deemed risky, and their lobbyists are pressing for legal protection on the safer ones, called qualified mortgages.

The temptation will be to make the definition of what constitutes a qualified mortgage as broad as possible, to ensure that the banks lend to a wide range of borrowers. But regulators concerned with the health of the banks won’t want a system that incentivizes institutions to make potentially risky loans.

One set of qualified mortgage regulations, being written by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, could be finalized as early as January. Other regulators like the Federal Reserve are expected to take longer in finalizing their mortgage rules. Resolving the conflict between mortgage availability and bank strength may ultimately depend the person who replaces Timothy F. Geithner as Treasury secretary. Mr. Geithner is stepping down at the end of Mr. Obama’s first term.

The Obama administration faces other daunting decisions.

One is how to deal with the considerable number of troubled mortgages still in the financial system. Banks might be reluctant to make new loans until they have a better idea of the ultimate amount of losses on the old loans. “If you don’t ever deal with these problems, you may never get to where you want to go,” said Mr. Lawler, the housing economist.

To help tackle that issue, the new administration might decide to make its mortgage relief programs more aggressive. It might even aim for more loan modifications, writing down the value of the mortgages to make them easier to pay. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulator that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has effectively blocked such write-downs on the vast amount of loans those entities have guaranteed.

A new Obama administration may move to change the agency’s stance on write-downs, perhaps by replacing its acting director, Edward DeMarco. If that happened, it would be a sign that the White House has a taste for more radical housing actions. The agency declined to comment.

Then there’s what to do with the Federal Housing Administration, another government entity that has backstopped a huge amount of mortgages since the financial crisis. The housing administration was set up to focus on lower-income borrowers, and it backs loans that have very low down payments. Its share of the market has grown from where it was before the crisis. The F.H.A. accounted for 13 percent of the market in the third quarter, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.

The new administration has to decide whether it wants the F.H.A. to continue doing as much business. The risk is that a big pull back by the F.H.A. could reduce the availability of mortgages to lower-income borrowers. Banks almost certainly won’t want to write loans with minuscule down payments because they’re considered riskier.

Ultimately, housing policy comes down to one question: Which borrowers should get the most subsidies?

Right now, the government largesse encompasses a wide swath of borrowers. But most analysts believe government support should be focused on lower-income borrowers.

“We will know that the Obama administration is serious about housing finance reform when it comes up with a proposal for affordable housing,” said Mr. Swagel, the University of Maryland professor.

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Obama’s Other ‘Cliff’ Is in Foreign Policy

For all the talk of a “fiscal cliff” threatening the nation’s finances, President Obama also faces a foreign policy cliff of sorts, with a welter of national security issues that he put on the back burner during the campaign now clamoring for his attention.

Atop that list, administration officials and foreign policy experts say, is the bloody civil war in Syria and the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program. The United States is likely to engage the Iranian government in direct negotiations over the next few months, in perhaps a last-ditch diplomatic effort to head off a military strike on its nuclear facilities.

Administration officials said that they had not set a date for talks and that they did not know if Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would give his blessing. But with Iran’s uranium centrifuges spinning and Israel threatening its own military action, the need to avoid a war may make this high-risk diplomatic effort Mr. Obama’s No. 1 priority.

Syria, too, will demand a pressing response, given the high human toll of the violence and the danger of a spreading regional conflict. Mr. Obama, however, remains leery of being dragged into the conflict, rejecting calls to supply weapons to rebel groups. His reluctance has been partly political, experts say, but he also has strategic qualms.

“At a time when he was running on a platform of ending wars in the Middle East, he did not want to be seen as starting one,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel.

“But if he doesn’t try to intervene in a way that gives him a way to shape a post-Assad regime on the ground,” Mr. Indyk continued, referring to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, “there’s a high risk of descent into chaos in Syria, and a sectarian war that spreads to Lebanon, Bahrain and eventually Saudi Arabia.”

Beyond those flash points, the president will have to grapple with Pakistan, an unstable nuclear state whose relationship with Washington has eroded during his presidency. And he will have to oversee an orderly exit from Afghanistan, where the waning American role threatens to throw the country back into chaos and Islamic militancy.

As he does so, some question whether he will rethink his administration’s heavy reliance on drone strikes to kill people suspected of being extremists, a policy that has proved lethally efficient but has sown deep resentment in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

More broadly, Mr. Obama will face Russia under the aggressive leadership of President Vladimir V. Putin and China with the opposite problem — negotiating a tumultuous change in power after a scandal that tainted the top ranks of its Communist leadership.

None of these problems are new, but many were effectively shelved over the past year as the president waged a bitter re-election battle dominated by his stewardship of the economy. Foreign policy played such a bit part in the election that even in the debate ostensibly devoted to it, Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney detoured into a discussion of high school test scores in Massachusetts.

For reasons of history and political reality, a re-elected Mr. Obama is likely to devote more time to foreign affairs. From Richard M. Nixon to Bill Clinton, presidents have tended to make their bid for statesman status in their second terms. The prospect of continuing gridlock — with the Republicans still controlling the House — gives Mr. Obama all the more reason to favor diplomacy over domestic legislation.

There is also some unfinished business from the past four years, not least Mr. Obama’s frustrated efforts to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. But several experts cast doubt on whether the president would throw himself into the role of Middle East peacemaker, as Mr. Clinton did in his second term.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has had a fraught relationship with Mr. Obama, faces his own voters early next year, but he seems likely to stay in power with a right-wing government. Such an arrangement could make peacemaking difficult.

“Because he got his fingers burned and was outmaneuvered by Netanyahu, he will wait to see the outcome in the Israeli election,” said Mr. Indyk, who wrote a book about Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, “Bending History.” He added that the president is “going to think long and hard about trying again.”

The added wrinkle for the United States: the Palestinian Authority is likely to petition for nonstate membership in the United Nations next month, a step it had put off until after the election. If the United Nations were to grant it, that would trigger Congress to cut off aid not only to the Palestinian Authority but also to the United Nations itself.

The mere fact of Mr. Obama’s victory does not ease these problems. But as the president himself famously said to Russia’s former president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, at a nuclear conference in South Korea, he may have more room to maneuver in dealing with them.

Ask foreign policy experts for wild cards in a second Obama term and two countries come up: India and Cuba. Little progress was made in opening the door to Havana during the past four years, but hope springs eternal for those who advocate an end to the half-century-old trade embargo. Mr. Obama also is likely to build on his ties to India.

India figures into the biggest geopolitical bet of Mr. Obama’s presidency: the American pivot from the Middle East to China and Asia. With four more years, experts said, Mr. Obama can put meat on the bones of an ambitious, but incomplete, policy.

Here, however, is where the fiscal cliff meets foreign policy. To be credible in reasserting an American presence in Asia, experts said, will require a robust military presence from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea. But unless the White House and Congress can strike some kind of fiscal deal, the Pentagon will face deep automatic cuts in its budget, depriving it of the ability to project power as it once did.

For Mr. Obama to realize his grandest visions abroad, then, he will still have to work with the same House Republicans who thwarted him on the home front in his first term.

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Apple shares slide to five-month low, competition grows

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