i would just like to close by saying that christina romer testified before congress that the economic shocks of this particular downturn in our economy was three times greater than the great depression. so, because of the lessons and refo reforms we put in after the great depression, we were better able to combat it. and, hopefully, the lessons we've learned now will help us not only to combat it, but prevent it in the future. chairman bernanke? and thank you for your service. >> thank you, congresswoman. we made a very strong effort to arrest the crisis. it was a global crisis. we worked with the europeans in order to do that. and i think in relative to the history of financial crisis, given the size of this one, i think we were pretty successful in stopping it. since then, i think the united states has been more aggressive in trying to restrengthen our financial system. i would cite, for example, our 2009 stress tests, which were highly credible. led to our banking system. capital in our largest banks has increased in the last two years by 75%, something in the order of $300 billion

. >> you saw that piece in "the journal" today, too, talking about christina romer? you already were talking about that. >> joe, here's the thing with the whole theory, fed officials now there's a developing theory that perhaps this relationship between gdp growth and employment has broken down a little bit, for some skeptics in the market i would suggest we go back to the early part of this sent isry, maybe the 1990s. there was this big argument about productivity and growth being as strong as it was. there was also a credit binge which made the product growth greater than it should have been. i think we see the ramifications today ever since the credit bubble burst. >> what was the high for unemployment? 10-3 and 8-3 and barely above 2% gdp, you're not supposed to be able to add -- to bring down the rate with gdp growth. >> the shrinking of the labor force. you have more and more people whose benefits have expired and they're kind of figuring out the next step, so to say. the numbers have shifted. there's been solid nonfarm payroll growth the last six months. >> al