As editor of The Economist, Walter Bagehot offered astute commentary on the financial issues of his day and his name lives on in an eponymous weekly column. During the upheavals of 2007–9, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had the name of this Victorian icon on the tip of his tongue. Banker, man of letters, inventor of the Treasury bill and author of Lombard Street, Bagehot prescribed the doctrines that—decades later—inspired the radical responses to the financial crises.