From The Wall Street Journal... scroll down for live video from the hearing:
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday that the recession should end this year and 2010 "will be a year of recovery," if actions taken by the government lead to some stabilization in financial markets.
But that's a mighty "if" given recent severe declines in equity markets to levels not seen in more than a decade despite repeated announcements of government bank and housing rescue plans.
Read more from The Wall Street Journal (the article is password protected).
Bernanke hoped that the current recession, now in its second year, will end this year.
But he said there were significant risks to that forecast and any economic turnaround would hinge on the success of the Fed and the Obama administration in getting credit and financial markets to operate more normally again.
"Only if that is the case, in my view there is a reasonable prospect that the current recession will end in 2009 and that 2010 will be a year of recovery," Bernanke said.
Among the risks to any recovery are if economic and financial troubles in other countries turn out to be worse than anticipated, which would hurt U.S. exports and further aggravate already shaky financial conditions in the United States.