Charles Kolb

What do former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Larry Summers have in common? The short answer: other than Ph.D.s and professorships, not very much. But it turns out that they both share an unfortunate skepticism about the importance in American education of studying foreign...

Twenty years ago, I worked for the U.S. president who famously disliked eating broccoli. He made public his curious fondness for pork rinds instead. If his mother was unable to force him to eat broccoli, it is even less likely that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and his brethren...

As a nation, we are often quite good at setting goals -- but in reality we are missing them now more often than we meet them. It wasn't always this way.

We once had presidents like Eisenhower and Kennedy who set goals for the country such as developing a national...

The Occupy Wall Street movement has not been kind to the American business community. Among other things, OWS highlights the income disparity between the top 1% of U.S. income earners and the 99% "rest of America." Guess who's among that top 1%?

Too many Americans see Wall Street and American...

Steptoe & Johnson LLP is a first-rate national law firm. Some years ago, when I was general counsel at a large national charity, we retained Steptoe to handle a series of complex tax and pension issues that related to the charity's former management, three members of which went to federal...

Madison Avenue is in a manic frenzy! Almost everywhere you look, advertisers are trying frantically to get the American consumer back into the game. Before the 2008 Great Recession, consumer spending accounted for some 70 percent of our national gross domestic product. For most Americans, their home represents...

America's future can be seen clearly in today's European crisis over sovereign debt. What is not clear is the path our country will take to resolve our own economic crisis.

First, some facts. American companies are reportedly sitting on more than $2 trillion of cash that they could invest, but...

By every account, the 2012 election will be the most expensive in history, potentially dwarfing the $5 billion spent in the last presidential cycle. What many Americans don't yet know is that it won't just be the candidates themselves shopping for dollars, but independent political groups that can...

The current price of a share of publicly traded stock reflects the discounted net present value of that company's expected future earnings. That's how an economist explains the value of a publicly traded American company. The company's aggregate value -- its market capitalization -- is the total value of all...

Let's hope that the president elected in 2012 -- whether it is Mr. Obama again or a Republican -- is a conviction leader capable of providing not just bold words but also bold actions. Our country still needs bold structural reforms: in fiscal policy, tax policy, health care policy, infrastructure...

As America's economy risks lapsing back into recession, debate continues over who should act and what should be done to avoid another dangerous economic slowdown.

Some urge the Federal Reserve to launch a third round of quantitative easing. Democrats want another stimulus bill. Republicans want more deficit reduction. The Obama...

My last three trips on Amtrak trains have not been not good. Perhaps I am jinxed, because three out of three is, I am sure, not the company's typical record. Or perhaps it is. I do not know.

What I do not understand is why Amtrak seems incapable of offering...

After this month's resolution of the debt-ceiling crisis, Washington's new focus is on jobs, unemployment and what Congress and the Obama administration can do to reassure the American public, restore economic growth, and get people back to work.

The current period is characterized by persistent and far-reaching uncertainty. Markets...

Most American presidential candidates, at some point during their campaigns, publish a glowing, self-serving autobiography. These volumes tend to be the work of ghost-writers, although occasionally some are written personally by the candidate: they contain personal details written in a style reflective of the candidate's personality and manner of speaking...

Many economists have concluded that solid economic recovery around the world requires fixing the "fiscal imbalances" that have characterized much of the last decade. Those "fiscal imbalances" were, perhaps, direct enablers -- if not a cause of -- the global economic downturn that began nearly three years ago.

By "fiscal...

Headlines have dubbed it "unthinkable," and businesses small and large have urged
lawmakers for months to agree soon to ensure the country doesn't default on its debt.
But next week's August 2 deadline to raise the federal debt ceiling looms, and a recent
deal that could have...

Perhaps we have already had our lost decade; we just didn't know it until now.

The ten-year period that began with September 11, 2001, has not been one of our nation's best. In fact, by almost every objective consideration, this period has seen one embarrassment after another.

While we came...

The Obama administration is now out of ammunition: neither monetary nor fiscal policy options are available to stimulate economic growth, reduce unemployment, and encourage consumer spending.

Since December 2008, the Federal Reserve's overnight federal funds rate (the interest rate the Fed charges banks for short-term loans) has been at 0.25...

The former New York Controller, Alan Hevesi, is now in a New York prison. He received a one-to-four-years sentence after pleading guilty to corruption. As Controller, Hevesi was the sole trustee of the state's $129 billion pension fund. He took bribes from individuals who wanted access to the fund's investment...

A recent Time Magazine cover story addressed whether the United States was in serious decline or still had better days ahead. Fareed Zakaria saw decline; David Von Drehle was the optimist. Both authors noted several trade, economic, and education trends to make their points, but both...