Today’s NPR Talk of the Nation program examined whether the Financial Press missed the meltdown? David Wessel defended, economics director, defended the Wall Street Journal by saying it covered some of the signs just not enough. The reason, Wessel says that it was all so complex that everyone missed it. What is interesting is one of the reasons he gave: “a failure of the imagination” (and possibly diligence). We have heard the phrase “failure of the imagination” before and that was in the Report produced by the 9/11 Commission. The findings noted that it was not a lack of data but a failure in connecting the dots of troubling reports. When asked-and a lot these days–why we didn’t see this coming, Peter Coy economics editor for Business Week magazine replies “If everything we had said and written came true then we might have expected some of this to have happen,” Coy said. “But I think there was a failure of imagination among economists, policymakers, as well as journalists.” Going forward, some soul searching questions will need to be answered on missed cues that have resulted in enormous consequences.
Visit NPR for the audio and article at http://bit.ly/kb7nO
May 19, 2009...9:49 pm
Financial Meltdown-where was the media?
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