Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke answers questions before the Joint Economic Committee in Congress. In the first round of questions from Chairman Casey, Vice Chairman Brady and Rep. Sanchez, the Fed chief weighs in on interest rates; what is holding back the economic recovery; and the possibility of a further round of quantitative easing.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testifies before Congress on the state of the U.S. economy, Fed policy and the outlook for economic growth. Bernanke comments on the weak jobs numbers and the decline in gas prices, and says concerns about Europe, U.S. fiscal policy and a poor housing market have continued to impair economic recovery.
"We really have two separate economies. One economy is behaving reasonably well; in the second economy, there is an extreme level of forward discounting going on. You can see it in the spreads between the 30-year Treasury on the one hand, and the 5-year Note, that spread is the largest in history," says Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, sharing his perspective on the problems facing the U.S. economic recovery.
CNBC's Steve Liesman breaks down this morning's economic data on GDP, jobless claims, and the ADP numbers. Ethan Harris, BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research and John Lonski, Moody's Capital Markets Research Group, discuss the impact of weak economic data on the markets, ahead of Friday's jobs report.