The U.S. is in, or at least heading toward, a crisis of financial illiteracy, decried panelists at a Newseum event Monday.

The Newseum Institute, based in Washington, D.C., hosted a panel discussion titled, “The State of Financial Literacy Education Today.” The topic is endlessly discussed, but never becomes irrelevant.

The institute’s chief operating officer, Gene Policinski, moderated the panel of four professionals from education and journalism.

The need for financial literacy is not specific to investors or retail clients, said panelist Peggy Collins, a co-host of Bloomberg Finance. When she started at Bloomberg almost a decade ago, she found “there was a deep desire and craving for information from people who are the most sophisticated in finances in our industry.”

She said Bloomberg’s audience wants to know how to save for retirement and their children’s college expenses.

On the personal finance side, Michelle Singletary, who writes the “The Color of Money” column for The Washington Post, pushes for her readers to understand the “why” before participating in the “how.”

“I try to get people to understand why you need to save for retirement, not how,” Singletary said. “Once you know why to do it, there are resources that will show you how.”

Policinski steered the discussion toward consumerism. Panelist Susan Linn, a psychiatry lecturer at Harvard Medical School, warned against a prolonged consumerist culture, warning that if society doesn’t pull back from it, “we won’t have an Earth.”

“It’s not about money (or at least it’s not just about money),” said Linn. “It’s about providing opportunities for [children] to engage in a world in a way that values nature, that values relationships, that values the ineffable splendors of life that you can’t buy.”

When the conversation shifted toward technology, she noted that tech has made things both better and worse.

“I think that a huge problem is our understanding of ethics has not kept up with tech,” she said.

Singletary beat the drum for practicality.

“People [are] not broke because they don’t have some online tool to watch their money,” she said. Instead, she said, they’re broke because they think the things they have are not good enough and want to buy more.

Collins added that financial services companies once waited for clients to come to them with their assets, but now technology has made it possible to speed up client acquisition.

“Companies have become a lot smarter about using tech to get to their customers first,” said Collins.

The fourth panelist, Lauren Willis, a professor of law and author of the book The Financial Education Fallacy, complained about the credit system. Willis said children are taught that the price of credit depends on the cost to the lender and risk to the borrower.

So, “if you are offered high priced credit, you are a bad risk,” she said. But she added that that notion was not practiced in the credit industry, stating that lenders charge the consumer on what they can get them to pay.

Willis feels this has contributed to consumers failing to comparison shop because their financial literacy education is not realistic.

Throughout the discussion, most panelists were pushing for financial literacy programs to go beyond a bank account and teach children and adults how to be skeptical about who and what they are giving their finances to.