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How we got into this mess: a political primer.

Article Excerpt
The April 2 G20 meeting in London of the major world economic leaders could have been the most important global economic gathering since 1944, when the Bretton Woods conference reshaped the old order near the end of World War II.

But it wasn't.

Another Bretton Woods is not in the cards because U.S. and European officials, like ships passing in the night, couldn't agree on their response to the financial crisis. This is a tragedy because the world's policymakers are failing to deal with many fundamental issues, including the question of how we got into this mess. Lack of a widespread policy consensus adds confusion to global political constituencies dangerously unaware of the global nature of the financial crisis.

Someday, historical archeologists will sift through the rubble of this ugly financial period. They will conclude not only that our regulators were asleep at the switch, the big global banks deployed reckless amounts of leverage while losing any understanding of their own balance sheets, and gluttonous American consumers spent a lot more than they earned.

Historians will also discover the flip side to this morass. The entire...

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