It's been more than five years since the onset of the Great Recession, and some economists are still trying to assess the damage that was done to our economy. Three researchers in the Dallas office of the Federal Reserve have estimated that the total cost of the recession to our economy was somewhere between $6 trillion and $14 trillion, or between 40 and 90 percent of a year's GDP.
Boil that down, and it becomes a minimum of $20,000 lost by each man, woman and child in America. And that's just in pure financial costs; when the researchers figure in the toll on our well-being, the cost rises to $120,000 per person.
While those are estimates, there is a fairly concrete figure that points up just how devastating the losses were. Between the third quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2009, aggregate household net worth fell by $16 trillion in the U.S. That means that, by the time the crisis was over, we had all lost 24 percent of our assets.
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