Economics Editor of the Wall Street Journal and a current Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Although it seems to have arrived with devastating suddenness America's financial crisis was decades in the making. Years of financial indiscipline in both personal accounts and national budgets contributed to today's spiraling collapse. What is especially notable is the inability of financial institutions and experts to foresee the looming problems. The performance of the Federal Reserve bank is especially troubling. Wall Street Journal Editor David Wessel explains their failure.