Robert J. Samuelson

The rising price of oil could signal a new era of nasty geopolitical fights.

No one likes the side effects of a recession: higher unemployment, weaker profits. But slumps are inevitable, and they do have some benefits.

Without the proper cultural catalysts, those trying to escape from poverty face long odds.

We've wrongly made globalization a scapegoat for many of our economic problems. But the ritualistic attacks are dangerous.

The American obsession with success at any cost may be just be too high a price to pay.

We used to think that financial panics were a thing of the past. Now we know that they are a clear and present economic danger.

How a new bipartisan commission might actually be able to reform the program by 2009.

Last week the Fed shifted its emphasis from fighting inflation to preventing panic. Was that the right call? Certainly it was the popular call.

We are now in the "blame phase" of the economic cycle. As the housing slump deepens and swings in financial markets widen, we've embarked on the usual search for culprits.

Since 1970, farm subsidies have cost us almost $600 billion. Not much. But they survive because of politics.

We can't ignore the facts. Only an act of willful denial can separate immigration and poverty.

We are now in the "blame phase" of the economic cycle. As the housing slump deepens and swings in financial markets widen, we've embarked on the usual search for culprits.

The U.S. mortgage crisis is dominating headlines, but it's not the real threat to the global economy. Robert Samuelson makes sense of our complex world financial system.

We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism.

If you haven't noticed, the major presidential candidates—Republican and Democratic—are dodging one of the thorniest problems they'd face if elected: the huge budget costs of aging baby boomers.

Many are focused on the declining housing market, but the larger picture is the tyranny of the capital markets--which increasingly hold sway over our economy.

If you haven't noticed, the major presidential candidates—Republican and Democratic—are dodging one of the thorniest problems they'd face if elected: the huge budget costs of aging baby boomers.

Driving a hybrid car makes a big lifestyle statement, but is really helping to save the planet?

I have always liked commas, but I seem to be in a shrinking minority. The comma is in retreat, though it is not yet extinct. In text messages and e-mails, commas appear infrequently, and then often by accident (someone hits the wrong key).

For better or worse, there are limits to re-engineering the human spirit.

The Fourth of July holiday makes this an apt week to reflect on one of the great underreported stories of our time: the rise of speech regulation. Glance at the First Amendment, but do not think it still applies.

It's one of those vast social upheavals that everyone understands but that hardly anyone notices, because it seems too ordinary: the long-predicted "cashless society" has quietly arrived, or nearly so; currency, coins and checks are receding as ways of doing everyday business; we've become Plastic Nation.

A. Higher oil Prices; B. A prolonged housing slump; C. A steep rise in personal savings; D. A big hedge-fund failure.

The most important price in the American economy is not the price of oil, computer chips, wheat or cars. It's the price of money—interest rates. When rates move, they ultimately affect the price of almost everything else.

You have never heard of the Treaty of Detroit, which you may connect with the French and Indian War (1756-1763). Guess again. The Treaty of Detroit is a long-lost label describing a series of landmark labor agreements between the United Auto Workers and the Big Three U.S. automakers.

Higher gas prices may be the best way to slow global warming.

When I joined The Washington Post as a reporter in 1969, hardly anyone I knew in the news business considered it a business. We belonged to a craft, a calling or maybe a profession.

Recent research shows that only a small percentage of mass American layoffs could be attributed to jobs going overseas.

Our stalled immigration debate needs more common sense and more common decency. America's immigration system is unquestionably broken. It encourages illegality, frustrates assimilation and barely aids the economy—exactly the opposite of what it should do.

It's increasingly clear that much of our standard economic vocabulary needs revising, supplementing or at least explaining. The customary words we use don't, for one reason or another, fully convey what's actually happening in the real world.