"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."

-- Stein's Law, after economist Herbert Stein (1916-1999)

WASHINGTON -- We all know that Stein's Law will someday apply to health care spending, which has risen from 5 percent of the ...

WASHINGTON -- It's been five years since the onset of the financial crisis -- the rescue of Bear Stearns in March 2008 -- and we still don't know whether the financial system is safe. In a recent speech, Daniel Tarullo, the Federal Reserve's point...

WASHINGTON -- It's the great moral imperative behind the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"): People should not be denied health care because they can't afford insurance. Health status and insurance are assumed to be connected, and opponents have ...

WASHINGTON -- Are we missing a couple million jobs? These would be jobs that exist but lack workers to fill them. The notion that the recovery is being hobbled by too few skilled workers is seductive. It might explain today's stubbornly high ...

WASHINGTON -- For most Americans, Europe is out of sight and out of mind. We figure that the worst of its debt crisis has passed. Italy has a new government. To mute social unrest, some countries are slightly relaxing austerity policies. The ...

WASHINGTON -- We are passing through something more than a period of disappointing economic growth and increasing political polarization. What's happening is more powerful: the collapse of "entitlement." By this, I do not mean primarily cuts in ...