He was a familiar byline in Newsweek and The Washington Post for decades, explaining the intricacies of economic policy in ...

For more than 40 years, he helped readers make sense of economics and society. His plainspoken columns were informed by his ...

Robert Samuelson, the Washington Post columnist who has provided so much material for this blog over the years, announced his retirement on Monday. I’ll take this opportunity to agree with a couple of ...

I read a Washington Post column of yours just after Christmas—the one about the fairness dilemma and how Baby Boomers need to take a hit on Social Security and Medicare. You’ve been making these ...

The logic of the economic recovery isn't working -- or, at any rate, not well. By that logic, over-borrowed Americans would repay loans and replenish depleted savings, creating a temporary drop in ...

Four years after the onset of the financial crisis -- in March 2008 Bear Stearns was rescued from failure -- we still lack a clear understanding of the underlying causes. Hundreds of studies and books ...

It has always been hard to measure poverty, because poverty is as much a state of mind as a condition of material well-being. Still, we seem to have made a bad situation worse. Consider the Census ...