Lecture Summary:
-Why is Washington so maddeningly dysfunctional? (Truth: It’s as bad as it looks.)
-Why Congress isn’t worrying about the federal deficit these days and why YOU should.
-What factors will determine if the next decade for the U.S. economy is as bad as the last one? Is there any chance it will be better?
-How is the press dealing with the onslaught from 24-hour cable TV news coverage and the rise of Twitter, Facebook and blogs?

Journalist David Wessel is economics editor of The Wall Street Journal and writes the newspaper’s weekly “Capital” column. His book, “In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic,” was a New York Times notable book in 2009. Wessel has shared two Pulitzer prizes, one for a series on the persistence of racism in Boston (Boston Globe, 1983) and the other for a series on corporate wrong-doing (The Wall Street Journal, 2002). He frequently appears on National Public Radio and WETA’s Washington Week. A 1975 graduate of Haverford College, Wessel is also the co-author of “Prosperity,” a 1998 book on the American middle class.