Moreover, after the recession officially ended in 2009, the subsequent recovery was significantly slowed by a variety of persistent headwinds, including households with underwater mortgages and high debt burdens, reduced access to credit for many potential borrowers, constrained spending by state and local governments, and weakened foreign growth prospects.
In an effort to return employment and inflation to levels consistent with the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate, the FOMC took a variety of unprecedented actions to help lower longer-term interest rates, including reducing the federal funds rate (the dotted black line) to near zero, communicating to the public that short-term interest rates would likely stay exceptionally low for some time, and buying large quantities of longer-term Treasury debt and agency-issued mortgagebacked securities.