WASHINGTON — We are gutting government. It is an extreme irony of the Obama presidency that a proud liberal — someone who believes in government’s constructive role — is presiding over the harshest squeeze on government since World War II. What’s happening is simple: Spending on the elderly and health care is slowly overwhelming the […]

WASHINGTON — We are constantly learning new stuff about the housing bubble — and some of the new stuff contradicts the old. This is obviously important, because the housing bubble led to the 2008-09 financial crisis and Great Recession. What we don’t understand may one day come back to bite us. There’s a standard and […]

WASHINGTON — The European economic crisis refuses to go gently into the night. As 2015 opens, Europe represents “the biggest economic threat” to the fragile global recovery, as The Economist magazine puts it. Few would dispute this assessment. There are two overarching problems. The first is (you guessed it) Greece. The parliament’s inability to elect […]

WASHINGTON — Hello, 2015. We now are in the sixth year of economic recovery since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009, says the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of academic economists that dates business cycles. But, if upbeat economic forecasts come true, this could be the first year that feels like […]

By Robert Samuelson The Washington Post Writers Group WASHINGTON — The start of a new year is a good time to take stock. For those of us in the news business, this suggests stepping back and asking what’s important. Here are five economic stories worth watching. (1) What happens to oil? Saudi Arabia has helped […]

By Robert Samuelson The Washington Post Writers Group WASHINGTON — What is curious about the present understandable preoccupation with the middle class is the assumption — both explicit and implicit — that the system is “rigged” (to use Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s favorite term) against this vast constituency of Americans. In reality, just the opposite is […]