country s financial situation. the dow is off just half a percent which is a much better than it was earlier in the day. i ll talk to you a little later about why we re concerned about turkey s currency and how currency crises can be contagious around the world. ultimate ultimately, we are nearly a decade away from a financial crisis that almost led to the collapse of the financial system. when house prices were sky high in the 2000s, lenders offered mortgages that couldn t qualify for them. they packaged them and sold them to other financial institutions and then home prices started follow. in 2008 i appeared on oprah to explain what happened using annie as an example. annie s interest rate went up and he couldn t afford the new payment. so the bank repoe tessesses ann house but it isn t worth as much as the mortgage. so this beautiful system all of a sudden collapsed because the
bank didn t have to just repossess annie s house, they had to repossess millions of houses, put them all on sale and the bottom line is they weren t worth much money so this is what brought us to the brink of collapse. losses forced some financial institutions to go out of business or be sold. look at all those names that don t exist anymore. aig nearly collapsed. the federal government moved in. congress approved a $700 billion bailout program. the federal reserve bought government securities and other financial assets to increase the money supply. that staved off a greater economic crisis. but the profound effect continues today. the federal reserve bank of san francisco released a study this week which found that the financial crisis cost every american $70,000 in lifetime income. it also says that u.s. economic growth remains well below what its 2007 trend would have implied. and it s unlikely the economy will ever make up that lost