Bernanke presented a sobering picture of the U.S. and global economies as well as of the financial systems here and abroad. He also discussed the current policy initiatives on the fiscal front, the financial stability front and the mortgage foreclosure front, and he pledged that the Federal Reserve would do everything in its power to help stabilize the economy and the financial markets.

Bernanke said that ?EUR??,,????'??there is a reasonable prospect that the current recession will end in 2009 and that 2010 will be a year of recovery.?EUR??,,????'?? But he stressed that, for this pattern to materialize, actions taken by the Administration, Congress and the Federal Reserve must be successful in ?EUR??,,????'??restoring some measure of financial stability.?EUR??,,????'??

Bernanke went on to say that, in the view of monetary policymakers, a full recovery of the economy from the current recession is likely to take more than two or three years.

Large gaps between actual and potential GDP are opening up, and a large degree of slack is developing in the labor markets. Furthermore, the economy still will be dealing with various imbalances in the early stages of recovery.

National Association of Home Builders forecast places the end of the current economic recession around the end of 2009. We?EUR??,,????'???re viewing 2010 as a recovery year that will lead to a multi-year economic expansion that will achieve sustainable rates of GDP growth, unemployment and inflation.