Steven Pearlstein

Washington, D.C.

Steven Pearlstein is the Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University. He was previously a business and economics columnist at The Post, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2008. He was also awarded the Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. He is the author of "Moral Capitalism, Why Fairness Won’t Make Us Poor." Early in his career, he worked for members of both the U.S. House and Senate.
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Latest from Steven Pearlstein

Amid the debt ceiling madness, a lonely voice of sanity emerges

Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat, has proposed an artful compromise to tame runaway budget deficits

April 24, 2023

Congress loves to play a disastrous game that erodes trust

Lawmakers are trapped in a conundrum of their own making — so desperate to hold on to power that they have traded away their ability to exercise it by voting.

March 21, 2023

There’s a simple explanation for all this debt ceiling nonsense

The all-too predictable gamesmanship over the debt ceiling is distracting lawmakers from a serious issue.

February 15, 2023

Will America’s woes bring down democracy and capitalism worldwide?

Martin Wolf issues a pessimistic warning in 'The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism' and pins much of the blame on the failures of elites.

February 9, 2023

Will party unity tear Congress to pieces?

Republicans struggled to unite behind a speaker, while Democrats were unified on the sidelines. A bit of cooperation would have led to a better result.

January 9, 2023

What Congress needs is an Uprising of the Serious

Why do serious lawmakers let extremists run the House? The time to reclaim their power starts with the speaker vote.

December 29, 2022

Can the Fed fight inflation without triggering a meltdown?

After the recent turmoil in Britain, anxiety about the stability of the financial system is rising alongside interest rates.

November 2, 2022

Why the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ is no such thing

August 7, 2022

A former Fed chair still wants the punch bowl — and a high-proof punch

In his book, "21st Century Monetary Policy," former Fed chair Ben S. Bernanke argues for letting the central bank do everything it can to correct serious downturns and keep cheap money flowing into the economy.

May 27, 2022

The flawed math behind Elon Musk’s Twitter deal

An overleveraged billionaire’s bid for an overvalued company may signal the last gasp in an age of sky-high confidence and magical thinking.

May 2, 2022