The future is on the way.  Leading-edge innovators, we are assured, have already moved on, and are earnestly focusing on the just the sort of problems - manufacturing, energy, transportation (and I'd add healthcare) - that urgently require imaginative solutions.

If ever we need evidence of ideology run rampant, the House vote to eliminate the annual American Community Survey and the Economic Census to provide basic information on the state of businesses and industries in the country and data used for generating quarterly gross domestic product estimates is exhibit A.

“Americans spend too much on health care.” “We have worse health outcomes than our European counterparts.” Talking points such as these helped drive President Obama’s controversial and sweeping health care reform into law two years ago. But are they accurate?

The mortgage meltdown and ensuing financial crisis were the result of an unprecedented accumulation of weak and risky Non-Traditional Mortgages (NTMs). By mid-2008 about one-half of outstanding all loans were NTMs. The early 1990s is the appropriate benchmark since shortly thereafter government policies required the broad-based introduction of “flexible underwriting standards.”

How did the financial system accumulate an unprecedented number of risky mortgages?

Mitt Romney's impressive victory Tuesday makes it very likely that we will look back on the Florida primary as the contest that determined the 2012 Republican nomination. To be sure, the campaign fight will go on, and Romney is by no means assured of a sweep of the relatively few February contests.

Despite frequent, dire warnings about the unsustainability of government budget deficits in the United States, Europe and Japan, investors are lining up to lend to some governments at very low interest rates.

The “strategic guidance” announced this week from the commander in chief to the Department of Defense is, make no mistake about it, an order to retreat.