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The 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed have had devastating effects on the U.S. economy and millions of American lives. But the U.S. economy will emerge from its trauma stronger and widely restructured.

We are inheriting the worst financial system since the Depression. We're inheriting a situation - when people go back and study major banking crises a quarter century from now, the one that America developed in 2007 and 2008 is going to be one of those crises.

In 2008, when the global financial crisis struck, it was a bad year for a lot of developing countries, and it manifested itself in consumer confidence.

The stress on the financial system in the fall of 2007 was significant, but not so significant as to threaten the overall stability of the U.S. economy, although it did lead to the beginning of a recession at the end of 2007.

The 2008 economic crisis and Great Recession forced widespread restructuring throughout the U.S. economy - not unlike a company gritting its teeth through a lifesaving bankruptcy.

Within a few months in 2008, household finances were crushed as asset values fell, millions of jobs were lost, countless credit cards were canceled, and thousands of homes were foreclosed on.

The banking collapse was caused, more than anything, by bad government policy and the total failure of bad regulation, rather than by greed.

The dominant economic approach of the last thirty years is now on its last legs. Letting the market rip and an indifference to inequality are now seen as important causes of the greatest economic crash since the 1930s.

This crisis exposed very significant problems in the financial systems of the United States and some other major economies. Innovation got too far out in front of the knowledge of risk.