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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.

However, the economics of our business continued to deteriorate. We barely escaped bankruptcy a year ago, and in the aftermath of that escape we had to make some even tougher decisions.

Imperceptibly, the developed world's manufacturing base was gradually eroding and being replaced by securitized finance that destroyed itself and nearly its economies in 2008.

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.

It took us years to get into the mess that we got ourselves in at the end of 2008, and it's going to take a while to get us out. We lost eight million jobs, we saw a financial system near collapse, we have a continuing housing crisis that we're making progress on dealing with.

This crisis is not simply a more severe version of the usual business cycle recession, the typical downturn in which economies ultimately adjust and stabilize.

Bankruptcy is about financial death and financial rebirth. Bankruptcy is the great American story rewritten. We're a nation of debtors.

The economy has barely recovered from the so-called 'Great Recession', with a 2 percent annual rate of growth since mid-2009. Peak worker wages, business investment, and productivity all occurred around the year 2000.

In 1978, we adopted a new Bankruptcy Code in the United States, and a principal part of this was designed to adjust to the new corporation, to find ways to let a corporation that had gotten into financial trouble reorganize itself. A big part of the selling point on this bankruptcy law was, 'It will preserve jobs.'