Ben Testimony at 10 a.m

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will testify before the House Financial Services Committee at 10 AM video links for web users: CNBC feed, And a live feed from C-SPAN.

Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress

July 21, 2009
Chairman Frank, Ranking Member Bachus, and other members of the Committee, I am pleased to present the Federal Reserve's semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress.

Economic and Financial Developments in the First Half of 2009
Aggressive policy actions taken around the world last fall may well have averted the collapse of the global financial system, an event that would have had extremely adverse and protracted consequences for the world economy. Even so, the financial shocks that hit the global economy in September and October were the worst since the 1930s, and they helped push the global economy into the deepest recession since World War II. The U.S. economy contracted sharply in the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year. More recently, the pace of decline appears to have slowed significantly, and final demand and production have shown tentative signs of stabilization. The labor market, however, has continued to weaken. Consumer price inflation, which fell to low levels late last year, remained subdued in the first six months of 2009. Full Report