Robert Samuelson - The Durango Herald

The brave and scary new world of trading blocs

WASHINGTON – We may be on the cusp of an upheaval in global trade. Since World War II, the international trading system has operated on the premise of “most favored nation (MFN),”...

DATE: Jun 6, 2019 | CATEGORY: Robert Samuelson

Many economists often don’t know what’s going on

WASHINGTON – The most intriguing thing we have learned about economists in recent decades is that they don’t know nearly as much as they thought they knew. We see this all the tim...

DATE: May 15, 2019 | CATEGORY: Robert Samuelson

Candidates ignore cost of an aging population

WASHINGTON – Just for the record, we ought to note that trustees for Social Security and Medicare recently released their annual reports. The two programs alone constituted 45 pe...

DATE: May 1, 2019 | CATEGORY: Robert Samuelson

What caused the financial crisis? Our success

WASHINGTON – It is astonishing that even though the global financial crisis occurred a decade ago, we do not yet have a clear and convincing explanation of its basic cause. Theori...

DATE: Apr 19, 2019 | CATEGORY: Robert Samuelson

Federal control of education has failed ... Next?

WASHINGTON – You can count on one familiar refrain in the 2020 presidential campaign: Fix the schools. Faith in education is one of the nation’s bedrock values. Better schools wou...

DATE: Apr 14, 2019 | CATEGORY: Robert Samuelson

Democrats, media to blame for ignoring Dreamers

WASHINGTON – The “Dreamers” lost again. As you will recall, the Dreamers are illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as young children. Most have grown...

DATE: Feb 26, 2019 | CATEGORY: Robert Samuelson

Great Recession worse than Great Depression?

WASHINGTON – Here’s today’s economic quiz: Was the 2007-09 Great Recession more damaging than the Great Depression of the 1930s? Surely the answer is “no.” In the 1930s, unemploym...

DATE: Nov 30, 2018 | CATEGORY: Robert Samuelson

It’s no longer the economy, stupid – so what is it?

WASHINGTON – One lesson of the midterm elections is that economic growth is losing its power to unite the country and to reduce explosive conflicts over race, religion, ethnicity, immigrant ...

DATE: Nov 13, 2018 | CATEGORY: Robert Samuelson

Ducking hard questions, we all lost the elections

WASHINGTON – We all lost the fiercely contested midterm elections. They were a referendum on President Donald Trump, which suited both Republicans and Democrats just fine. Democra...

DATE: Nov 6, 2018 | CATEGORY: Robert Samuelson

Solving climate change may well be impossible

WASHINGTON – If there were any doubt before, there should be none now. “Solving” the global climate change problem may be humankind’s mission impossible. That’s the gist of the latest report...

DATE: Oct 16, 2018 | CATEGORY: Robert Samuelson

Will the next financial crisis come as a stranger?

WASHINGTON – The news is better than you might think. A decade after the onset of the 2008-09 global financial crisis – an event usually dated to the bankruptcy of Lehman Bros. – ...

DATE: Sep 7, 2018 | CATEGORY: Robert Samuelson

Samuelson: Could Lehman Brothers have been saved?

WASHINGTON – Who lost Lehman Brothers? As we approach the 10th anniversary of Lehman’s collapse (Sept. 15), these questions won’t go away. The Lehman bankruptcy is portrayed as th...

DATE: Aug 27, 2018 | CATEGORY: Robert Samuelson