WASHINGTON — Give it a B-minus. The budget deal reached by congressional leaders has much to recommend it. Its biggest virtue, assuming it’s passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama, is that it will end the threat of a national default. The federal debt ceiling — limiting the Treasury’s ability to borrow […]

WASHINGTON — Americans have long been fascinated with global rankings. Where do we stand? How do we compare with other nations? We like to imagine ourselves as No. 1: the national equivalent of the racing halfback who raises his forefinger as he crosses the goal line. Common sense says otherwise. We excel in some things […]

WASHINGTON — We have all manner of policy proposals from the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, but there’s a sobering disconnect between what they’re advocating and the large problems the country actually faces. The candidates seem caught in a time warp. Democrats plug new entitlements (college subsidies, paid family leave). Republicans embrace tax cuts. All […]

WASHINGTON — We journalists often have mixed feelings about what we report and write. Naturally, we like to see our reporting vindicated by events or other reporting. This makes us feel prescient. Still, we often feel bad, because what we’ve reported harms some group or society as a whole. That’s how I felt when I […]

WASHINGTON — In a fascinating talk recently, Jason Furman — the White House’s chief economist — took a crack at solving a great puzzle of the lackluster recovery: weak business investment. The explanation takes on added urgency after the latest disappointing job report. Although September’s unemployment rate remained at 5.1 percent, the number of new […]

WASHINGTON — It’s no secret that although the U.S. economy is near “full employment” (September’s jobless rate: 5.1 percent), its rate of growth of about 2 percent annually has been maddeningly weak. Since World War II, growth has averaged 3 percent to 4 percent. In an $18 trillion economy, these apparently small differences quickly add […]

WASHINGTON — It’s beginning to look like the economic game of 2016 will be a tug of war, defined by a simple question. Will the plodding but steady U.S. recovery be derailed by the weakness of so-called “emerging market” economies, led by China, Brazil and others? The betting (so far) is that the American recovery […]

WASHINGTON — And now comes the life-expectancy gap. It may change the national conversation over Social Security and an aging society — for the worse. We all know that America is aging, but probably few of us know how skewed the process is in favor of the middle and upper-middle classes. Among men, life expectancy […]

WASHINGTON — These are worrying days for the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank. Surrounded by critics on the left and right, it can hardly do anything without being second-guessed or denounced. Last week, the Fed decided not to raise its target “fed funds” rate, a move that was praised by some economists but was greeted […]