Most Americans would agree that Government management of the economy affects them directly and powerfully. They might even concede that an understanding of what Historian Thomas Carlyle called "the dismal science" of economics is more important than ever before. But, economics is a forbidding subject, burdened by statistics and often by predictions and conclusions that emphasize the "dismal" and minimize the "science." Each week TIME'S Business section strives to make these sometimes murky matters pertinent, interesting and understandable. It achieves this by stressing in its stories the role of the people who make and administer major economic decisions, and by employing the colorful charts and graphs of the Art Department's Nigel Holmes and Renee Klein. Says Business Editor George M. Taber: "Baseball fans are crazy about statistics, but most people are turned numb by business numbers. Our task is to make economic statistics as interesting as those of baseball."

This week's cover story, written by Associate Editor Charles Alexander, with assistance from Reporter-Researchers Rick Bruns and Lawrence Mondi, takes up the knotty subject of federal deficits. To sound out those involved in determining the size of those numbers, TIME correspondents talked to White House aides, Administration economic advisers, Cabinet officials and members of Congress. Says Correspondent David Beckwith, chief Washington-based economic reporter: "The beat mainly involves four men and the organizations they head--David Stockman and the Office of Management and Budget, Donald Regan and the Treasury Department, Paul Volcker and the Federal Reserve, and Martin Feldstein and the Council of Economic Advisers. When a story focuses on one of them, you always have to talk to the other three." The prune focus of this week's story is CEA Chairman Feldstein. To get a feeling for the man and his ideas, Beckwith interviewed Feldstein at length in his corner office in Washington's Old Executive Office Building.

"Feldstein is incredibly businesslike," reports Beckwith. "At the end of our interview, I took a minute to review my notes. Instead of just sitting there, Feldstein got up and went to his desk to work. He has wit and humor, but frankly, it is the dry, academic kind that isn't going to keep Johnny Carson from sleeping nights."