welcome, i'm tom foreman.did not get a little nervous this year you weren't paying attention. from economics to politics to pop culture everything seemed to be in flux. sure the nation signed on for change but by year's end some were ready to say keep the change. let's move on to better times. still, as we chart our course into the future, it's worth looking back on all that got us to where we are. back to where the whole big, bad year began. we've got to give the biggest and worst story of 2009 to the economy. because it certainly gave it to us. >> i think it's a year where america had to get off its sugar high. >> started out with an economic crisis and seemed to be a bottomless pit and started out as a very frightening time. >> certainly if you had a job you were really lucky and everybody was scaling back in their own way. >> from the start all the numbers were running bad, employment down, home sales down, business down, down, down. >> i think it was a brutal year. i think this was a year when americans w