The transcripts released last week by the Federal Reserve, documenting its response to the burgeoning financial crisis in 2008, reveal the extent to which its forecasts struggled to accurately portray the rapidly deteriorating economy.

The Fed's lagged response to what we now know to be the deepest recession since the Great Depression gives an idea of how slow policy-makers were to act. Although rates were slashed twice in January 2008, it was not until December that they hit zero. By that point