When I was first asked to give this talk I wondered which American recessionary economy you wanted me to discuss – because, using the National Bureau of Economic Research’s definition of a recession, which is: “A significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than six months, normally visible in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), including, employment, industrial production, wholesale-retail sales”, – there have been as many as 47 recessions in the United States (U.S.) since 1790.

This morning (yesterday) I will give you a brief overview of how the U.S. Government and the American people have dealt with recessions since we began keeping track of business cycles in 1790.

I will conclude with a summary of what one well-known U.S. think tank – the Brookings Institute – and the Democratic and Republican parties consider to be the key lessons we have learned from the 2007-2009 “Great Recession” – the most severe recession since the great depression.

Cycles in the country’s agriculture, consumption, and business investment, and the health of the banking industry have contributed to American recessions.

And, as the U.S. economy became increasingly intertwined with economies throughout the world, the downturns in the U.S. economy have been felt around the globe.

Each time we have fought our way out of a recession the U.S. government and the American people have learned new lessons about the best way to get our economy on the path to recovery.

One of the best lessons we have learned is that recessions offer governments an opportunity to make the case to the people for taking action on overdue economic reforms.  Some of our most important long-term advances in addressing economic challenges have come in the form of legislative and policy changes.

The U.S. economy has changed beyond recognition over two centuries, but some features endure: a vigorously competitive marketplace, spurts of invention and innovation, political swings between more government regulation and less, between higher protective tariffs or other barriers and freer trade.

When George Washington took office as the first U.S. President in 1789, eight out of 10 Americans lived on farms, mostly just feeding themselves, and the largest U.S. city, New York, had only 22,000 residents.

At the end of the American Civil War, 76 years later, the country was split between an industrialised North and the South which had an economy based on agriculture.  By the 1880s, U.S. manufacturing and commercial output surpassed farm output in value.