ABSTRACT
When Barack Obama took the oath of office on January 20, 2009, the country was in the thirteenth month of the Great Recession and all indicators reflected an economy in the midst of a deep downturn. Ten days after the inauguration, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that real gross domestic product (GDP) had decreased at an annual rate of 3.8 percent in the last quarter of 2008. That figure would later be revised to show an even bigger decline of 6.8 percent.
