Robert Samuelson

The Age of Inflation is ending the way it began: quietly. Along with the Cold War, the rise and fall of inflation has been a defining event of the present...

With more than 170 million people and an expanding middle class, Brazil now ranks as the world's ninth-largest economy, just behind China (seventh) and Canada (eighth). For Brazil to default...

The stock market's fall, it seems, has created a new social crisis. People in their late 50s and 60s are postponing retirement or, if already retired, returning to work. Their...

"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits." -- Mark Twain Nothing now so needs reforming as "reform" itself. Every campaign for reform tends to exaggerate the evils it seeks...

The WorldCom scandal is the latest building block in a new economic mythology. By the old mythology, the Internet and the "new economy" promised a rising stock market and anxiety-free...

Since its peak in March of 2000, the stock market has lost about a third of its value, or almost $6 trillion, according to Wilshire Associates. Everyone would like to...

I have bad news for everyone else: the United States will win the World Cup. Maybe not this year, but the triumph is closer than the rest of the world...

Sometimes the largest truths are the most obvious and overlooked. One is this: prosperous societies are profoundly conservative. The conservatism is not partisan or ideological. It is personal and psychological,...

If government waste were an art form, the new farm bill would be the Mona Lisa. The lavish agriculture subsidies have few redeeming social or economic values. But as a...

We can't deal with things we won't talk about. In politics, some subjects are too unpleasant or hypothetical to encourage honest debate. Before Sept. 11, "homeland security" was ignored. Before...