hutchins here, welcome to what i prove will hope will be an insightful session with ben bernanke and david wessel. when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and been bernanke was fed chair, he had to create one from scratch. a few of us expected that his successors would need to refer to it so soon but generally for all of us he left a copy for jay powell that i would recommend for people on this call if they're interested. there's a good book called firefighting which is a summary of the crisis and one called first responders which gives deep into the individual programs and i recommend everyone have a look at it over the next couple of weeks. and among other things it's a distinguished economic historian suited to put this horrible event that we are experiencing in context so it will give us a sense today of what will determine how deep this recession will be, perhaps how long it will last , how effective the fiscal and monetary policy response has been and perhaps whether the covid-19 recession will leave long-lasting scars on the us and global economy so i'll turn this over to ben or his remarks

i will turn it over to ben for his remarks after which david wessel will host questions and then it will be instructions on how audience members can ask their own questions so over to you and thank you for joining us. >> thank you for joining us this afternoon. seems like a long time ago but january and february we had a strong economy with 3% unemployment rate. we are hopeful the strength of that economy will provide moment him to get to this tough period. what has happened is the world has been hit by the covid-19 virus which is doing great damage from an economic perspective the fact that nonessential businesses are being shut down totally is having an enormous effect on economic activity. people are not shopping not working, people are not going to school, we will see the effect of that in a data very soon. you need to keep the data in perspective. if gdp in the second quarter is 10% lower than in the first quarter, an annual basis multiplied by four, very possible we will see gdp numbers in the second quarter an order of magnitude minus 38% or greater, likewise unemployment is hard

in the global economy so turn this over to ben for his remarks after which david wessel will pose some questions and after that there'll be some instructions on how the audience members can ask their own questions. so bent over to you and thank you for doing this. so thank you and thank you for joining us this afternoon it feels like a long time ago but in january or february we had a good economy with three and half% unemployment rate. where helpful lease the strength of that economy will provide a little bit of momentum and financial reserve to get through this. first what had happened as the world has been hit by the covidien 19 virus, the virus itself is doing great damage. but from an economic perspective the fact that nonessential businesses are being shut down globally it's having an enormous effect on economic activity. people are out not shopping they're not working kids are not going to school. we are going to see the effects of that very soon. you need to keep the data in perspective. if gdp in the second quarter is say 10% lower than in the first quarter, we will record on

hutchins here, welcome to what i prove will hope will be an insightful session with ben bernanke and david wessel. when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and been bernanke was fed chair,