The Obama administration's proposal to fund a consumer financial protection agency with fees charged to big banks is smart on two counts: Economically, it helps temper the advantages enjoyed by financial institutions considered too big to fail, thereby discouraging their growth to dangerous levels; and politically, it goes a long...

Almost overnight, the conversation in Washington has moved from placing odds on a future recession to the likelihood that one is already here. In other words, the politicians and policy wonks have caught up with the bulk of Americans, who've seen this coming for months. Now the wrangling...

Six months ago, I took a buyout from a shrinking Los Angeles Times and wrote about it here. I didn't know what would come next. Certainly, I couldn't have predicted where that step would take me.

Now I'm across the country at an influential Washington D.C. think tank -- the...

After 10 years, hundreds of bylines and some of the best experiences of my professional life, I'm leaving the Los Angeles Times at the end of this month, along with 56 newsroom colleagues. We each have our reasons for taking the latest buyout offer from Chicago-based Tribune Company. In my...