Mr. DeMarban the complete collapse of the financial markets that led to the worst recession since the great depression is hardly what one should term a "national economic downturn". That financial collapse happened because of the creation of Credit Default Swaps that contained worseless mortgage that the good folks at Golman Sachs etc knew to be worthless but bundled and sold anyway. Tens of thousands of people lost their homes, retirements and jobs when that inevitable collapse happened. The economy was losing 600,000 jobs each month for the last six months of the Bush administration and into the first four of the Obama admin. Executives who were directly responsible for undoing the regulatory process that could have prevented the collapse made hundreds of millions of dollars betting against the very housing market bubble they had created including this Mnuchin cat that trump has appointed as his Secretary of Treasury who was born into Goldman Sachs. Alligators report to the swamp.