Robert J. Samuelson

Give the Fed its due.

The House health 'reform' bill would extract more subsidies from the young.

Wonder why President Obama's trip this week to China didn't go more smoothly? Meetings between Obama and top Chinese leaders were reportedly stiff; the Chinese also limited domestic press coverage of Obama's appearances.

In my Newsweek column this week ("Obama's Malpractice: Why the health-care bill isn't reform"), I argued that-contrary to the Administration's claims-none of the various proposals now floating around Congress would reduce future budget deficits or the rapid rise in national health spending.

Why the health-care bill isn't reform.

Are the United States, Japan, Great Britain, and other first-world nations in danger of defaulting on their debt?

Does the Obama administration ever plan to balance the budget? Apparently not. In a speech at New York University, Peter Orszag, head of the Office of Management and Budget, suggested that the administration's goal was to reduce the deficit to a "fiscally sustainable level," which he said is "roughly 3 percent" of gross domestic product (GDP).

We have yet another study that disputes the Obama administration's claims that the various congressional health proposals will somehow muffle the relentless rise in medical spending.

How much can governments borrow?

It pretends to control costs and improve access when it doesn't.

Obama administration officials have repeatedly emphasized the need to "bend the curve" of health-care costs. Reducing increases in health spending, they argued, was essential to controlling future federal budget deficits and making insurance affordable for most Americans.

Here's some good news for the United States and the rest of the world: the American consumer may not be dead after all.  Conventional wisdom holds that typical U.S. shoppers are so traumatized by high debt and rising unemployment that their spending will remain subdued for years.

Why Stimulus 2.0 might backfire.

When the lobby from the health-insurance industry—America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)—released a study early this week contending that the Senate Finance Committee's health-care legislation would increase private insurance premiums beyond current law, supporters of health-care "reform" were quick to denounce the report as biased.

Today's youngest Americans are likely to be worse off than their parents.

How we narrowly avoided a depression.

If the FDIC is really in trouble, who can offer it a lifeline?

Using tires to send a message.

We all know the story: The economic recovery has begun in the United States and the rest of the world, but it will be sluggish and disappointing. Shell-shocked and over-borrowed American consumers will spend less and save more.

Obama and his opponents aren't being honest. But neither is the public.

Doing the math on the Obama plan.

What if they don't come back?

Why Ben Bernanke was President Obama's only real choice.

If you're chairman of the Federal Reserve, you don't get paid to spread gloom and doom. So, not surprisingly, Ben Bernanke had some uplifting things to say in today's speech at the Kansas City Fed's economic conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

If not, it won't amount to much.

Obama would expand benefits while only talking about controlling costs.

The state's budget debacle holds a lesson for America, but one we will probably ignore.

Despite the rhetoric, costs will rise.

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A readers' guide to the recession.