Christina Romer's testimony in the front of the Joint Economic Committee

Source

We currently expect that the pace of the overall decline in the economy to moderate sharply over the next several months. This is consistent with the Blue Chip consensus forecast, which shows a rate of decline of GDP of 2.1% in the second quarter.37 We expect the economy to level out in the second half of the year and then begin to recover. Whether the recovery begins later this year, as most private forecasters predict, or takes a bit longer is hard to know. Because labor market indicators tend to lag changes in output, most likely we will see positive GDP growth before we see increases in employment and declines in the unemployment rate.

The President’s economic team is keeping a watchful eye on all aspects of the economic situation, and we will not rest until we are assured of a long-term and lasting recovery with robust employment growth. Because the downturn has been so long and so severe, the recovery will almost surely take a long time. But, as I have stressed, our intent, and our expectation, is for the economy not just to recover, but to emerge even stronger and more resilient than before.