On the evening of January 18, theDanishParliament agreed to a financial package worth 100 billionDanish kroner(17.6 billionUSD).In response, markets panicked yet again. On January 22, the editorial board ofThe Christian Science Monitorwrote that the four largest U.S. banks "have lost half of their value since January 2."

The two-month period from January 1-February 27 represented the worst start to a year in the history of theS&P 500with a drop in value of 18.62%. By March 2, theDow Jones Industrial AverageIndex had dropped more than 50% from its October 2007 peak.The decline has been compared to that of the 1929 Great Depression, which was 53% between September 1929 and March 1931.

On March 6, the Bank of England announced up to 150 billion pounds ofquantitative easing, increasing the risk of inflation.

In March 2009, Blackstone Group CEOStephen Schwarzmansaid that up to 45% of global wealth had been destroyed by the global financial crisis.

By March 9, 2009, the Dow had fallen to 6440, a percentage decline exceeding the pace of the market's fall during theGreat Depressionand a level which the index had last seen in 1996. On March 10, 2009, a countertrendbear market rallybegan, taking the Dow up to 8500 by May 6, 2009. Financial stocks were up more than 150% during this rally. By May 9, financial stocks had rallied more than 150% in just over two months.

On June 22 theWorld Bankprojected that the global production for 2009 would fall by 2.9%, the first decline since the second world war.