Report of the Joint Economic Committee Congress of the United States on the 2009 Economic Report of the President Together With Minority Views

Report of the Joint Economic Committee Congress of the United States on the 2009 Economic Report of the President Together With Minority Views, January 11, 2010.

  • “The Obama administration and Congress headed into 2009 with an economy teetering on the brink of depression; the housing bubble had burst and a financial crisis had rippled through every part of the economy. 741,000 jobs were lost in January 2009 alone. Real GDP dropped by 6.4 percent in the first quarter of 2009, continuing the fall that began in the third quarter of 2008. In an October Joint Economic Committee hearing, Dr. Christina Romer, Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, testified that the “shocks that hit the U.S. economy last fall were, by almost any measure, larger than those that precipitated the Great Depression.” Between 2007 and 2008, household wealth plunged by 17 percent, more than five times the decline seen from 1928 to 1929. Stock prices were more volatile than they were during the onset of the Great Depression and the yield spread between the least-risky (AAA rated) corporate bonds and riskier, but investment-grade (BAA rated) bonds rose by much more in Fall 2008 than during the panic that precipitated the Great Depression.”
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