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David Wessel

Economics Editor, Wall Street Journal

David Wessel is economics editor for The Wall Street Journal and writes the Capital column, a weekly look at the economy and forces shaping living standards around the world. He is responsible for overseeing coverage of the Fed and the Journal’s daily coverage of the macro economy, global trade and economic trends. He appears frequently on National Public Radio.

His book, “In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic,” was published August 4, 2009.

Previously, Mr. Wessel was deputy bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau. David joined The Wall Street Journal in 1984 in Boston, and moved to Washington in 1987. In 1999 and 2000, he served as the newspaper’s Berlin bureau chief.

He previously worked for the Boston Globe, the Hartford (Conn.) Courant and Middletown (Conn.) Press. A 1975 graduate of Haverford College, he was Knight Bagehot Fellow in Business & Economics Journalism at Columbia University in 1980-81.

David has shared two Pulitzer Prizes, one for Boston Globe stories in 1983 on the persistence of racism in Boston and the other for stories in The Wall Street Journal in 2002 on corporate wrong-doing. He is the co-author, with Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Davis, of Prosperity, a 1998 book on the American middle class.


The economics editor of the “Wall Street Journal” on Bernanke’s performance, AIG’s bailout, and the ironic position of J.P. Morgan in the crisis. This series was made possible by the […]
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